I'm getting kind of tired of hearing about how Limbo not is worth 1200 MS points just because it's a 3-4 hour long game. For me it's  day one purchase. I want it to be short, intense, really good, satisfying and without filler. BUT that is not the meaning om this thread. My point is to understand how much 1200 points is in your country. In USA it seems to be 15 USD and that translates to about 110 SEK (Swedish kronor). I can't understand how 100 SEK is a lot of money for 3-4 hours of good entertainment. In Sweden we pay 100 SEK to go to the movies. Inception that premiers here on thursday costs us 110 SEK. I can buy mabey five bags of chips for that money. I can eat at Burger King ONE time and have 40 SEK left or buy two pizzas. A bus ride cost 20 SEK and a 500 g of minced meat cost 35-45 SEK. A full price game goes for 600-700 SEK.
Do you understand what I'm getting at? I want you guys to tell us where you from and what 15 USD is in value for you. What can you buy instead of Limbo that you think is better? Let's see if you can put this games value into perspective.
 
I have already decided that I will buy Limbo so there is no point in showing you guys what I could/would like to buy instead, BUT as you can se above I have given you an example of what 15 USD/110 SEK equals in value. Now I want to see your examples. 

well, i'm from Canada so 1200 MS points is 15$ CAD. i would buy Metal Slug XX simply because i love Metal Slug to death

When we get games like Alien Swarm for free, 15$ seems expensive for some people.  

Torchlight, or Team Fortress 2

I could buy a 7-day bus pass to get to school to do a degree that I hate.

1200 MS is about 110 DKK (Danish Kroner) but new games over here usually retails for about 400 DKK if you know where to buy them?!

The game is not priced at 1200 to recoup development costs and turn a profit, its entirely because Microsoft wants a bigger cut of game sales and is trying to make 1200 the new 800.

I will buy this when it goes on sale since i have regretted every single arcade game I've bought at 1200 MS points 

1200 points (around £10 here) seems like a perfectly fair price for 4 hours of entertainment to me. 
 
To play devil's advocate, however, I could pick up one or two excellent ageing retail games for the same price - just looking at game stores online and I see Mass Effect, Halo 3, Fable 2, Resident Evil 5, Arkham Asylum, and loads more for under £10. But these games had their turn - they've all sold thousands of copies at £40. £10 for a new, independently developed title seems like an equally reasonable way to spend my money.

Braid. Shadow Complex. Metal Slug 3 and Geometry Wars.

But really, my problem with the price has less to do with the length -- Braid only took three or four hours, but I was more than happy to pay 1200 MS points for that -- and more to do with the fact that I don't think the game looks especially good.

Since I already have 720 leftover points from a free 1500 point card I got with Red Dead, I will only be paying $8.25 Australian for 500 extra points. 
 
Weee!

In Europe, 1200 points is 15$. I would buy Death Spank instead.  
 
The game might be good, but i'm not into plataformers anymore, and 3-4 hours isn't very good in terms of game length, also 15$ is pushing the envelope, when you have awesome games at much less, be it on Xbox Live or anywhere else.

I don't like platformers enough to spend 15$ or even 10 just because the art looks cool.  Most games on downloadable services are 50%+ overpriced and could learn a lesson from steam.  Aka 400k sales at 7$ is much much better than 100k at 15$
 
I buy basically all my MS points for 30-40% off so it makes overpriced games matter alot less.

I wipe my ass whit  15 dollers LOLL 

1200 points is roughly £12-13, which would buy you 3 or 4 pints of beer in a pub. Or one music album. Or two short paperback books. Or a cheap computer mouse.

For me it's not that the experience isn't worth $15.  It's more a matter of I can wait a year or less for it to become $10 at a time when I might not have a backlog of discounted games to play.  I still have Defense Grid, Symphony of the Night, Splosion Man, The Dishwasher and Puzzle Quest that need to be completed.  Not that I'd mind paying the $15, but I like the feeling of saving a few bucks using the Deals of the Week.  I agree with your reasoning and I hope it is lots of fun.    

1200 points in Poland is about 45 PLN, you can go to the cinema three times for that money, 
and buy yourself a couple of burgers with something to drink.
You can almost buy a new Just Cause 2 for the PC for that price.
You can buy 1/4 of a X360 game for that money.
 
So depends how you look at it.
It's expensive, but for a X360 game, it's normal.
 
It's still a LOT of money though..
Ehh..

I'm using the same logic as @Dogma:
I can buy this 4 hour game for $15, or I can buy a $15 DVD that probably barely lasts more than 2 hours.  I can go to a 2.5 hour movie for $10.  I can eat at a fast food restaurant for $7, for a meal that might last 45 minutes.  For me, this is totally worth it.

Why do people feel the need to tell other people how much their money is worth?  15 bucks might mean sitting at a desk for half an hour for some people, but for others it means crawling on your hands and knees in squirrel and bat shit for an hour in a 120+ degree attic in the middle of summer.  Accept the disparity between the two perspectives and don't lecture people because you think it's not a lot of money for them to spend.

" I'm using the same logic as @Dogma: I can buy this 4 hour game for $15, or I can buy a $15 DVD that probably barely lasts more than 2 hours.  I can go to a 2.5 hour movie for $10.  I can eat at a fast food restaurant for $7, for a meal that might last 45 minutes.  For me, this is totally worth it. "

1200 points is £10.20, I am not sure where I read that, there is a high chance it could have been a dream... £10.20 is a little overpriced for arcade games I believe, but it isn't too expensive for me not  to buy the game. As people are talking about buses, I buy travel cards for £2 which can take me on any bus or train in London for the whole day, and early hours of the next day. This of course is a child's ticket, if I was to buy an adult ticket, the same ticket would cost me £7.50. I can also buy a hooker for 30Euro, and that only lasts 2- I mean, 15 minutes. 

I still think that 'Hours per Dollar' is a terrible metric for trying to measure a game's worth.  Adding an extra 5 hours of padding to something that should only be a 5 hour game doesn't make that game better, it makes worse.  I have never come away from a game thinking "Was that game worth what I paid for it?" - the question is always "Was that game worth my time?"  I think that with an aging gaming population, this is the question that reviews should start to concern themselves with too.  I'm not rich by any means, but I do have a job so the limiting factor on my gaming is always free time rather than money (gaming is dirt cheap compared to most other things you could be doing in your free time). 
 
I also find it kinda annoying when reviews try to factor price into the equation at all.  Making a game cheaper does not make a game better or worse, because quality is independent of price.  No game reviewer is at all qualified to make a value judgement on my behalf, because they don't have a clue about my financial situation and they don't need to.  Reviewers should concern themselves with making a quality judgement and the individual consumer can figure out the rest for themselves.  By all means mention the price - if it is worth mentioning - but it shouldn't be a consideration at all when judging the quality of a game.  Similarly, game length shouldn't really be a factor - unless it is negatively impacting the game experience in some way (ie. it feels rushed or dragged out).
 
Do you ever see a book review that says "I'd recommend it more highly if it had been 200 pages longer / $2 cheaper!"?  Of course not, because that's crazy.  Not all gamers / game reviewers look at games as cynically as this of course, but the prevailing attitude towards games still seems to be "How much of my free time can I kill with this game?" rather than "Is this game worth my free time?".  That's unfortunate, but I do think the industry (or at least some part of it) will probably grow out of it as this generation gets older and more employed.

" well, i'm from Canada so 1200 MS points is 15$ CAD "

Gamers and their hour/dollar ratios are the most ridiculous people on the planet.  I'd love to hear a book described like that.
 
edit: Dag, Jimbo beat me to it and made more sense.

Mount & Blade Warband is currently only $15 on Steam. I'm like 50+ hours in that game and still have a ways to go before I become King. Arcanum is less than half that on GOG and offers 40+ hours.
 
When you're on a limited budget you don't throw all your cash at a 4 hour game to last you the two weeks until you can buy another game.

I don't know if people are being are serious for calling a four hour $15 dollar game "short". Just look at all the $60 games out there that are only twice as long.

I can get 14 cheeseburgers from a McDonald's or two movie tickets. But that's not why Limbo isn't worth fifteen dollars it's because Shadow Complex is also fifteen and that game is IMO far superior.

" I still think that 'Hours per Dollar' is a terrible metric for trying to measure a game's worth.  Adding an extra 5 hours of padding to something that should only be a 5 hour game doesn't make that game better, it makes worse.  I have never come away from a game thinking "Was that game worth what I paid for it?" - the question is always "Was that game worth my time?"  I think that with an aging gaming population, this is the question that reviews should start to concern themselves with too.  I'm not rich by any means, but I do have a job so the limiting factor on my gaming is always free time rather than money (gaming is dirt cheap compared to most other things you could be doing in your free time). 
 
I also find it kinda annoying when reviews try to factor price into the equation at all.  Making a game cheaper does not make a game better or worse, because quality is independent of price.  No game reviewer is at all qualified to make a value judgement on my behalf, because they don't have a clue about my financial situation and they don't need to.  Reviewers should concern themselves with making a quality judgement and the individual consumer can figure out the rest for themselves.  By all means mention the price - if it is worth mentioning - but it shouldn't be a consideration at all when judging the quality of a game.  Similarly, game length shouldn't really be a factor - unless it is negatively impacting the game experience in some way (ie. it feels rushed or dragged out).
 
Do you ever see a book review that says "I'd recommend it more highly if it had been 200 pages longer / $2 cheaper!"?  Of course not, because that's crazy.  Not all gamers / game reviewers look at games as cynically as this of course, but the prevailing attitude towards games still seems to be "How much of my free time can I kill with this game?" rather than "Is this game worth my free time?".  That's unfortunate, but I do think the industry (or at least some part of it) will probably grow out of it as this generation gets older and more employed. "

i could get a .... i would save it

I can buy a whole month of Warcraft for that money... That said,  I'm still going to buy Limbo, and if I don't, it won't be because of the length, it'll be because there's nothing to it other than running through the woods in the dark (which has me sold- for now.)

" Why do people feel the need to tell other people how much their money is worth?  15 bucks might mean sitting at a desk for half an hour for some people, but for others it means crawling on your hands and knees in squirrel and bat shit for an hour in a 120+ degree attic in the middle of summer.  Accept the disparity between the two perspectives and don't lecture people because you think it's not a lot of money for them to spend. "

" I can get 14 cheeseburgers from a McDonald's or two movie tickets. But that's not why Limbo isn't worth fifteen dollars it's because Shadow Complex is also fifteen and that game is IMO far superior. "

Length of a game and its price are important factors, whoever says otherwise can't be a good reviewer.
Now saying a game is WORTH the money, even though it's pricey, that's different.
And I say this game's worth it.

" Length of a game and its price are important factors, whoever says otherwise can't be a good reviewer."

you could get a game that doesnt blow dick...
 
if you cant think of any games that dont suck as much as limbo, you are an ignorant racist

I'm more annoyed with the fact 1200 point XBLA games are the new 800 point games.

Because i just spent 14$ for dead space + burst limit.

" @Jimbo:  Wiat, I got confused.. we're talkin' about price here. Ekhm..  Okay, my point is, you cannot justify a 3 hour game being priced 60 bucks. And if a game is only 5 bucks, things can be overlooked.  That's what I think. When a journalist is reviewing something price needs to be considered. Cause he's reviewing things for the people, and they care how much money they spend, for what, and what value this thing has.  Also- you say you know best about the value of the game. Well, I bet you know best about the things you like too- like gameplay, but you trust the reviewer with that don't you?  Well.. some people don't (Brad's LP2 review) but you know what I mean. "

" well, i'm from Canada so 1200 MS points is 15$ CAD. i would buy Metal Slug XX simply because i love Metal Slug to death "

At $15 it is competing with a lot of games it just doesn't measure up to.  You can buy Shadow Complex, Braid, Battlefield 1943, and many other games on XBLA for $15.  The game itself just doesn't deliver $15 worth of value.  It feels like they decided to stick the $15 tag on it because it was being hyped and it was in the arcade line-up.  Personally, I would pay $5 for Limbo, knowing what I now know.  As it stands I probably won't purchase anything from this developer again. 
 
@Jimbo said: 

" @TwoLines said: 

" Length of a game and its price are important factors, whoever says otherwise can't be a good reviewer."

I believe that reviewers should concern themselves exclusively with the quality of a game.  Explain to me how price impacts the quality of a game?  If I buy Mass Effect 2 for $10 less than you buy Mass Effect 2; have I bought a better game than you have?  Of course not, the quality remains identical.  You could rightly say that I have a better value game than you have, but neither of us require a reviewer's opinion to know this.  You may believe that reviewers should pass judgement on the value of a game, and that's fair enough, but I would argue that position is pretty unique to gaming in my experience.  I would also argue that - even with the best will in the world - a reviewer cannot make a better value judgement on my behalf than I can make for myself.  All I need is for them to give me their informed opinion on the quality of the game. "