£80 per game ?

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L0rdMike said:
Street Fighter X Tekken is already £80 if you buy all the content locked on the disc.
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That's pretty absurd.

I don't mind DLC that is actually DLC. If it isn't finished when the game is released and you have to download it later on, i.e. it's actually downloadable content then that's fine.

That's assuming that this is all done honestly of course. There's nothing to stop developers ripping out some content, saying it's not done and selling it as DLC a month later. There really needs to be some legislation to regulate this sort of behaviour, BF3 Premium has shown that there are too many people willing to lap up absurdly priced content, pretty sure it's exploiting addiction just like WoW does.
 
IMO high prices can only really be justified for extremely niche games.

A train sim is only going to attract a few 1000 customers, so if you want to make it a "grade A" game, then those customers are going to have to pay more to fund the development.

With mainstream stuff, they almost always make more money by selling more copies at a lower price, so charging £80 for the latest battlefield won't increase quality, it'll just increase the profit margins for the publishers.
 
I'm confused how people think that companies would make more money by selling more copies at a lower price. If that were the case, why do they not do that? Is it because they like making money, but not too much money?!
 
I think what the OP is forgetting is that there simply isn't a large enough market for that kind of game yet. Everyone may want that epic game that pushes current hardware to its max but how many people own, or can afford a PC of the specs required to run a game designed to push those boundaries. Not many. With a small audience of people even able to run the game you then have to question, of that audience, who would actually buy the game? Not everyone with top spec PC's are gamers, and not all gamers like all genres of game.

So with things in their current climate, £80 hyper games aren't coming any time soon. As for what i'm willing to pay, a max of £50 really.

Edit: Also to people thinking that lower prices seem to equate to higher profits, you aren't looking at the whole story. The cost to distribute 2*£20 games as a pose to 1*£40 game is higher. The cost for the materials to put it on (it all adds up) is also there. The whole argument of 2,000*£40 is the same as 4,000*£20 is silly because that only looks at revenue. Other things to factor in are would a £20 game have a large enough budget to still make a really good game. £40 gets you enough per copy sold to spend a decent amount on production in the hope you'll create a godlike game which many will consequently buy. By halving that budget you will inevitably hinder the game from what it could be (it can still be good) and so possibly not get that cult following.

There's a lot more to it than that too. That's merely the most basic of economics.
 
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Not a chance I'd pay £80 for a game. I've made the mistake of paying £50 for RDR when that came out & my god I wish I never. Games won't get better by pumping more money into them, In fact I'd go as far to say that the more profit they make the more lazy they get at coming up with new ideas!

The longest I have played a game for was Half Life 1 & That included TFC, CS & then a whole boat load of free content made by either Valve themselves or just normal people that wanted to create something. That cost me £8 brand new in a box not long after it was released!

Most games don't have that lasting appeal anymore & it isn't long till everyone is jumping on the next bandwagon which turns out to be about 6hours long & then DLC released for stupid prices that is actually already on the disc :/
 
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Omaeka said:
This.

What is better business? Sell 7,500,000 games at £30 each, or 15,000,000 games at £20 each?
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As I have to tell people every time they come out with this fallacy: it depends where your break even point is and how much profit you make per sale. Reducing your sales numbers to more realistic levels: if after manufacturing, distribution, warehousing and retailer's cut you make £5 profit per unit, then 5 million sales at £20 makes you £25m in profit while 2.5 million sales at £30 makes you £37.5m. Which is better business now?

Now, consider that this notional AAA-release game also cost maybe £30m to develop. This comes out of your profits too. So selling at £20 means you need to sell 6 million copies to break even, but selling at £30 only requires 2 million sales. This is where market research comes in - you find out how much people would be willing to pay, how many sales will be lost if it costs more, and price your product accordingly to maximise profit. Funnily enough, the multi-million pound corporations selling games have already done this.
 
Wow, there are usually one or two games a year I'd even pay €50 for. My usual max for any game now is half that, and I'll generally pay no more than €15 for a game.

Even xbox games depreciate so quickly that you'd be mad to pay full price when you can almost always see it drop to half or less in a few months.
 
JeditOjanen said:
As I have to tell people every time they come out with this fallacy: it depends where your break even point is and how much profit you make per sale. Reducing your sales numbers to more realistic levels: if after manufacturing, distribution, warehousing and retailer's cut you make £5 profit per unit, then 5 million sales at £20 makes you £25m in profit while 2.5 million sales at £30 makes you £37.5m. Which is better business now?

Now, consider that this notional AAA-release game also cost maybe £30m to develop. This comes out of your profits too. So selling at £20 means you need to sell 6 million copies to break even, but selling at £30 only requires 2 million sales. This is where market research comes in - you find out how much people would be willing to pay, how many sales will be lost if it costs more, and price your product accordingly to maximise profit. Funnily enough, the multi-million pound corporations selling games have already done this.
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Of course but profits may not be the only target. There are some cases where a company would rather build a customer base of 6 million rather than 2 million, something they could exploit during their next release for example.
 
The day they expect me to pay £80 for a game, ( that no doubt will be ridden with DRM and rip off DLC ) is the day I become a full time retro / indie gamer.
 
alangelluk said:
£80 is extortionate imo. Even now the prices are over the top, like Tom D says..lower the prices and pull in more sales. Would probably lower piracy as well.
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+1,000,000!

As others have said stuff on Steam is often more expensive than the retail disc so bring prices down and you will sell more.

Stoner81.
 
£80 would make me pirate more not less. Personally i think PC games are priced about right and it's console games that need to get cheaper.
 
lewism said:
To be honest they can charge what they want for them. I'll just buy them a year down the line for 40% of the cost.

However, the day the industry comes to a 1 per person or tied key for console games is the day I stop playing console games.
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I couldn't agree more! Even with PC games I have bought a few that I don't particular like and under normal circumstances would just ebay them but since it is a one time activation I either bin it or I'm stuck with it.

It makes me actually buy less games as I'm unwilling to try something in the fear that I can't get my money back if I don't like it. I only buy games off steam/retail steam games if I know they are going to be good, lots of research etc. Gone are the days of "that looks nice I'll give it a try!"

Correct me if I'm wrong but with GFWL you can't even download the copy of the game if you lose your original disc and what's worse some of these one time activation games still require the bloody disc to play! (f1 2010)

Gaming has gone down hill for me that's for sure, on the plus side I'm saving £££££ :)
 
Larrs888 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but with GFWL you can't even download the copy of the game if you lose your original disc and what's worse some of these one time activation games still require the bloody disc to play! (f1 2010)
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I think if you buy a game through GFWL Marketplace you can download it whenever you like, but yeah just because a game box you buy off the shelf has GFWL on it doesn't mean you can download it when ever you like from the Marketplace like you can from games that work with Steam.
 
Well I'm not a tablet and iphone devotee I can see myself playing games that sell for 99c.

Currently my fav games are Stronghold kingdoms and temple run also Free.

Last full PC game I bought was BF3 and while the graphics were top I can't see myself being hooked anymore by PC games.

I loved playing MOHAA and initial call of duty games where I could jump on a server and own or be owned depending on who was on of a given evening.

/rant on
I loath the "level up" aspect of the new FPS games. I don't get a lot of play time and hate going on a server where joe blogs has an advantage because he has more free time than me. Sorry but it's not right.

/rant off

That said 80 quid for a game is something I will not pay. 30€ for a game for me is pushing it considering how many "original" games there are.

Very tempted by diablo III though only because it's Blizz who make great games.
 
The quality of most modern games? Not to mention the one-a-year franchises? How insulting they are, produced on a factory-line of zero innovation and zero creative effort?

Raising the price to £80? To incentivize what, exactly? More greed by the lazy indolent companies on top?

During this huge financial recession?

This is one of the worst threads I have ever read on this sub-Forum. Hopeless.
 
InKursion said:
The quality of most modern games? Not to mention the one-a-year franchises? How insulting they are, produced on a factory-line of zero innovation and zero creative effort?

Raising the price to £80? To incentivize what, exactly? More greed by the lazy indolent companies on top?

During this huge financial recession?

This is one of the worst threads I have ever read on this sub-Forum. Hopeless.
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+1
 
R.P.L said:
I'm confused how people think that companies would make more money by selling more copies at a lower price. If that were the case, why do they not do that? Is it because they like making money, but not too much money?!
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You're assuming a very simplistic model of economics, and one where game companies have perfect knowledge of the market, when in fact, they don't.

They know that reducing the price will result in increased sales, but don't know if it will be enough, so don't take the risk.

They also set the price at a prestige level - a level that other people also set prices at. They follow the market. They think, if everyone else is releasing their AAA titles at £40, and I release mine at £20, everyone will think I don't value my game, I see it as bargain fodder, not a true AAA title - so people won't buy it.

Once the market has settled on a price (for whatever reason - as the above paragraph illustrates, maximising profit is not always the reason), it's hard for corporations to make big adjustments to that price without risk.
 
JeditOjanen said:
Now, consider that this notional AAA-release game also cost maybe £30m to develop. This comes out of your profits too. So selling at £20 means you need to sell 6 million copies to break even, but selling at £30 only requires 2 million sales. This is where market research comes in - you find out how much people would be willing to pay, how many sales will be lost if it costs more, and price your product accordingly to maximise profit. Funnily enough, the multi-million pound corporations selling games have already done this.
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This is true, but also, have you noticed that game prices from big companies don't vary that much, even when individual game development budget's do?

They don't actuallyknow if reducing price will make them more profit or less because they don't know how many extra sales it will bring in; they are making assumptions, playing it safe, and following the industry norm.

Valve is the only publisher performing actual experiments with price, showing that, in a sales environment, you can massively increase total profit by reducing price (even accounting for lower unit price, the total profit goes up significantly). The data they have compiled is of less use for setting permanent prices, since it's hard to know how much of the increased sales would be sustainable, but no one else is doing such experiments so its the only data we have.
 
I very rarely buy games close to their release as £30 seems too steep for digital. I usually wait for them to drop to £20 or below before I buy.
 
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