I can't imagine one game costing close to $100, and I don't want to imagine it, but recently someone brought this fact to my attention. I disagreed with him, thinking, "who in their right mind would pay $100 for a game". Of course I've paid $150 for special editions, but never for just a game on its own. But he did have a point, with new hardware comes a learning process for developers and larger teams, and all of this costs more money. I can see games costing $70 maybe, but we've seen EA and Activision do crazier things before, so who knows. What do you think, would you pay $80 or $90 for a new game?
Will next gen hardware bring a large price increase for games?
@SwirlinDervish said:
What do you think, would you pay $80 or $90 for a new game?
I'm sure that I will, since I already have in the past (I think)
what would happen though is I'd buy less games, probably a lot less.
Game prices for AAA games likely has to go up at some point relatively soon (if next gen, gen after next), they basically haven't increased in twenty some years, yet the costs of making them keep going up. The amount of units games have to sell now to just break even is daunting.
I'll just leave this here: Games are cheaper than they used to be.
i don't know how well it would work for them to try that, but i could see them doing it. if they do, the original purchasers will probably be fewer at the release of a game (few exceptions would be for the big games like cod) but discounts might happen sooner depending on how quickly the drop off is in people buying the game.
With the success that F2P, Steam sales, DLC and season passes have had over the last few years it seems counter-intuitive for them move towards a higher initial investment. If anything I would say we will see more and more digital distribution (which already lowers the cost of games) with lower and lower prices, but more and more post-investment charges.
No, i don't really see it happening. It is strange that games have basically been the same price my whole life though. They were vastly overpriced 'back in the day' and i think are pretty fairly priced now.
I think if they want to try to get away with jacking up prices they can do it on annual sports releases (Madden, FIFA, etc). They would still be values at 80 or even 100 dollars given how many hours the people who buy them put into them. I played FIFA much less last year and still topped 200 hours. I wouldn't flinch if i had to pay 100 bucks personally.
Games are cheaper now than they've ever been, but I still see most people raising their eyebrows and thinking hard about their $60. It's often a lot better to wait only two months and get it for cheaper or, if you're a PC gamer, just wait for Steam summer and Christmas sales to get a ton of games for $60.
Could games break the $60 barrier? Possibly - but I don't think many people would spend more than that. Activision might be able to sell Black Ops 2 for $100 but why on Earth would they want to do that? They would lose a lot of customers and sales doing that - and not many other franchises could turn a profit at $60 a pop.
My bigger concern is anti-used sales measures personally, as i sell almost everything i have after finishing playing it, effectively making my purchases much much cheaper than the cash i'm laying out on the original buy.
No way. Games are having trouble staying at $60. Most go down to $40 within a month and then $20 in a year really.
I don't think it will happen, because I just don't see art departments exploding next generation they way they have with the current one. I imagine next generation will entail more scope and scale (greater draw distances, more enemies animating on screen, etc) and presentational enhancements (higher resolutions and frame-rates) than detail work, such as how life-like a character's cuticles are. The large-scale additions will mostly require replication of existing assets, and most game assets are already built to be viewed in 1920x1080, so I don't know if development teams will have the same kind of growth.
Of course, I'm pretty much just guessing.
I'd also like to point out, that when inflation is taken into consideration, games are actually significantly cheaper than they have been in most periods of gaming's past.
I'm hoping that they won't, but it's so hard to tell anymore. Of course, the current production model is making it harder for developers to make money on releases, but there has to be a way for them to cut corners on distribution or something with an increase in digital releases. I just hope that next gen consoles will push digital distribution in a direction where downloadable copies are available for major releases at the same time as retail copies. As a consumer, I want that choice.
I went to Australia a few years back and they had Call of Duty and Arkham Asylum on the shelves for $124.99. Which works out to around £85 (About $130 for Americans) so I guess anything's possible. I know they get it worse but if they can rob one country of decent prices then they can do it anywhere.
I doubt it. Even if it did happen, I would just shell out the dough for a PC and buy cheap games off of Steam.
I don't think they're stupid enough to believe that this would be a good idea, this would hurt more games than it would help. They'll get the extra money out of us through DLC and micro transactions.
Yes, however, keep in mind that games already cost more than just their retail price. If you include DLC and online fees (Xbox live). So while retail prices might stay around the same, the addition price for content will increase. For example, an old game would have came with 12 maps out of the box, a current one comes out with 6, with the option to buy another 6 for $30, and a new one would come out with 4 with the option to buy 8 for $40.
@AlexW00d said:
@Animasta said:
ask australians how they feel about this
They'll say 'hey, we earn twice as much as you smelly foreigners, big deal'. Or at least that's what they should say, as they earn twice as fucking much as everyone else.
Er? I have no idea where you found that, I'm pretty sure that's nowhere near true. In fact, anything i've found on this says that we ear less than you guys, even though the cost of living here seems higher, so i'm going to call BS on this one.
I think game companies should focus on fine-tuning gameplay and creating effective narratives rather than just pushing the graphics, this would allow for smaller teams and would create more intellectually stimulating games. There's no reason more powerful hardware should imply better graphics and greater costs for game production.
In North America I doubt they will increase the price of a standard game. The big franchises however will go the monthly subscription plan route , $60 game plus $10-$15/month subscription and you'll get a new map every other week until the next game is released (this has already started with Call of Duty Elite and Halo 4's Spartan Ops). You may see games get broken up into $40 single player, $40 multiplayer, or $60 for both (the $40 versions being download only to prevent confusion on store shelves).
I bet they will just add another 5 euro then another 5 after 2 years. Same way that they raised game prices from 55 to 65 euros this generation in the Netherlands.
Its getting ridiculous how you can save over 30% by importing including the additional shipping fees when buying newly released titles.
@Shirogane said:
@AlexW00d said:
@Animasta said:
ask australians how they feel about this
They'll say 'hey, we earn twice as much as you smelly foreigners, big deal'. Or at least that's what they should say, as they earn twice as fucking much as everyone else.
Er? I have no idea where you found that, I'm pretty sure that's nowhere near true. In fact, anything i've found on this says that we ear less than you guys, even though the cost of living here seems higher, so i'm going to call BS on this one.
Based on current wages in various industries coupled with our strong parity against the US dollar in today's economy, we ARE earning more than them technically and more fortunate in general, even with our higher costs of living. We have trouble convincing foreign companies to keep paying our local workers at our rates when they know they can go way cheaper elsewhere. Hell just recently there's the news that some of our own mining companies want to hire workers outside our country instead of our local workers and you have to be crazy not to think cost-cutting is not a factor here.
So even though we have our fair share of financial problems with the poor in our society that needs some work to solve (and a bunch of other things), us Australians with level-headed minds definitely know we are in a fortunate situation compared to other countries like the US.
Here's a link of our Australian minimum wages for people to get a good idea of just how lucky we are now that we hit parity, then compare to the American minimum wages. Sure depending on your way of life you would want to earn more and minimum wage won't be enough, but in event of hitting rock-bottom and you just want 'a' job, the minimum you should be getting is pretty good in comparison. I'd rather someone from the US link to a proper source for their minimum wages, but I'd be able to bet that we are definitely fortunate here. From there we can just import american goods at cheaper prices than most stuff we buy here locally and enjoy the savings.
Now that this is clarified, even though we could probably pay more, we don't generally like being exploited because of our stronger dollar (and I assume the same goes for a lot of other people everywhere else). Unless for some reason I want a boxed copy of a game right away, I never want to pay $80 or more for a game I could download for about $50 or less on Steam. With the exception of some companies that raise the price on steam to exploit us, most games are sold via the proper US dollar amounts, which is a lot more reasonable for wise Australian buyers that are conscious of their money. The increased prices make less sense in the digital space since they had no costs for shipping anything to our country, which is usually one of the key factors they give as to why our retail prices for games are higher.
I hate the way console games are priced and I hate the way console gamers look down their noses at games that aren't 60 dollars out of the gate. This is why I like PC gaming more and more, as time goes by. Devs put out games for what they feel is justified and, now and then, you can pick up a "full retail experience" for 20 bucks or so on day one. Basically, what I am driving at is I wish the "standard pricing model" for console games would go away. Apart from that, they can charge whatever the want. If it's too high, I will either skip it or wait to catch it on sale.
Really hope not.
Hard for me to justify paying the already $60 price tag for the average game. At this point, the only games I buy at full retail price are online games that I know I will put a lot of time into, or lengthy roleplaying games with a fair level of replayability.
Don't like the idea of games getting even more expensive.
Nah. Instead they're going to microtransaction the hell out of everything, like what EA does already but worse. Also you will need to buy the game new or else lose a significant chunk of content. The nightmare scenario will come to pass.
I already have a hard time justifying 60$ for games. So many of those 60 dollar games end up as disappointments to me a whole lot more than most 10-20 dollar digital download games these days. As the prices go up, the homogenization of these games go up and they lose any of their unique qualities. The AAA market is, frankly, boring to me.
If EA decides that games must cost 80$ now (as they're desperately trying to do already), then I'm done with that market entirely.
@ShiftyMagician: Oh, Minimum wage, yeah that makes sense. I was looking at average wages, which seems closer, though it depends what you're doing, some jobs have massive differences while others are pretty similar.
I think most people who play games often in Australia have realised that it's much cheaper to import stuff at this point though, even retailers have admitted this. Though that doesn't mean our prices are going to go down. A price increase in the US would be just as bad for us as it is for you guys really.
@kgb0515 said:
I'm hoping that they won't, but it's so hard to tell anymore. Of course, the current production model is making it harder for developers to make money on releases, but there has to be a way for them to cut corners on distribution or something with an increase in digital releases. I just hope that next gen consoles will push digital distribution in a direction where downloadable copies are available for major releases at the same time as retail copies. As a consumer, I want that choice.
Yes, me too. If digital distribution for major releases isn't a main focus for next-gen consoles, they dun fucked up, and the PC is going to continue to grow in the game space and eat into console sales, at least a little bit, hopefully. Although, even if they do get it right, with day-and-date digital and physical release, I still don't see the appeal of consoles as much anymore, except for big awesome exclusives that I'll personally be able to wait on for a good 3-4 game stack up before buying into the new consoles. And they'll be significantly discounted at that point too, even though consoles are probably going to be a good bit cheaper than this gen from day one. The market's changing.
I think publishers have already pretty much found the magic number. At $59.99 there is still a massive profit to be made. I suppose its possible we will se a 10 dollar creep in the states (due to the weakening dollar etc etc) but i think internationally it will likely be the same (so still $99 in Austrailia (you poor bastards), $69 in Canada £40 in the UK etc etc).
@Slag said:
@SwirlinDervish said:
What do you think, would you pay $80 or $90 for a new game?I'm sure that I will, since I already have in the past (I think)
what would happen though is I'd buy less games, probably a lot less.
Game prices for AAA games likely has to go up at some point relatively soon (if next gen, gen after next), they basically haven't increased in twenty some years, yet the costs of making them keep going up. The amount of units games have to sell now to just break even is daunting.
The cost of games went up $10 this generation, prior to that they mainly went down as the cost of media reduced significantly. Twenty years almost covers 2/3 of the history of games, at least in the play at home space.
More than likely it will stay the same but be offset by micro transactions even more than now.
Also, I got Phantasy Star IV when it was newly released at $100. There were Nintendo 64 games that were more expensive that the rest. Cartridges could get really expensive.
@ajamafalous said:
I don't think they could get away with it in the current economy.
Or any economy......
I don't see the cost of development going up at all to be honest. If console manufacturers are smart, there won't be much of an adjustment period for developers to become comfortable with a new console. Add to that middleware and production in general becoming more efficient (this really needs to happen), and things should be pretty sweet.
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