Steam would lose a lot of its power over people. Most people have a set price they are willing to pay for a game in mind and will wait until it goes on sale at that price before buying, introducing this model would just skip the waiting. The system is far to open to abuse for anyone to go for it properly though.

@vestigial_man: Yeah, you're probably right. I'd like to think most people would pay a reasonable amount. Although, "reasonable amount" differs from person to person of course.

$.01

I like how the humble indie bundles entice people to pay more that just a penny by giving away another game if you give the average amount donated per person. I highly doubt that could be a profitable business model though.

Also welcome to the site.

I would pay $60, because that's what I've been trained to pay, and I know is at least somewhat fair to the developer.

It might persuade me to try more games I wouldn't otherwise, at say $15 or so. But most people would just abuse the system. Most people barely understand why games are $60 as it is (and why that probably isn't enough anymore), and would just screw the people making them.

What if we decided on the amount we wanted to pay games

I do. "Is this game worth $60? No? I'll wait until it drops to a price I'm willing to pay to play it, then, or not play it at all".

With your idea, most games wouldn't make back what they cost to develop, especially AAA games.

@believer258: True. Then the triple-A market would disappear altogether. Which would pretty much leave the smaller and indie developers. Would the EAs and S-Es of this world then use crowdfunding as a way to compensate? Maybe. Although, to play devil's advocate, one might say obtaining money beforehand doesn't guarantee a good game either.

I do this also. Is it worth it I buy it first week, if not I'll wait a month or three.

Smaller games $20-$30 bigger games $40 would be my ideal price range.

I very, very rarely pay more then 40$. Even if they are new. I purchased DmC, Borderlands 2 and Bioshock infinite all on day 1 for less then 35$. I love the PC platform.

I'd just pay what I pay now: $5-15 depending on the game; $20 if I'm really impatient (I'm usually not). I have so many games to occupy my time that I'm more than willing to wait over a year for games to drop in price. I honestly cannot remember the last time I paid over $20 for a game.

Well if you gave the choice to anyone, they would alway pick free.

That's a nice fairy tale about people saying "hey I like your stuff heres a bunch of money."

Reality is like this "oh I can get this for free? Fuck paying."

I'd pay $60 with $10 deducted for every piece of DLC announced before the game's release, as well as $15 deducted for any DLC released within the game's first month.

What would I readily pay? $50. What would I actually pay? Probably like $25. You see, there's an element of responsibility in paying the full value of what a game is worth. But there's also an element of responsibility in saving money where you can for the future (and for some, for feeding their families and so on.)

I think this would be great. I tend to wait until games are between $15-$20, because I never play multiplayer and I think that's about what most singleplayer portions are worth. That said, I'm willing to pay full price for something like Skyrim or Borderlands 2 because I know I will enjoy them for a really long time. $60 dollars for a 6-8 hour single player experience is insane and I'll wait rather than pay that price. The only difference for the company is that they have to wait to get my money. I'm sure the publishers make more money with the current system because there are more people out there who will just throw money at them than there are people like me. That's fine, but I'll just keep waiting for most games.

I think the 'Pay What You Want' model is bullshit, so I always pay the minimum possible in the hope that people eventually cut that shit out.

This model ONLY works as long as it has the novelty of being a gimmick. It's that novelty which makes it worth reporting individual cases, and it's that coverage which generates the sales and makes it successful. If everybody used it, it would no longer warrant special coverage, and without that coverage it would fail as a business model ~100% of the time. The industry would collapse.

Let's face it, Humble Bundle is really about selling charity and taking a cut. Most of those games are dead in terms of sales potential by the time they end up on Humble Bundle.

I already do this, and really, doesn't everyone? I'll pay $25 if I'm feeling flush and a game is relatively new, but $15 is my typical upper limit, and even at $10 I think twice. I am fully aware that I am not supporting the budgets of modern games, I am being subsidies by the people who buy at $40-$60.

New games, If it's something I know I'll like I'd go up to $80, that would be maybe 0-2 games a year.

Something interesting that is getting good buzz but not normally something I'd play $50.

I'l buy pretty much anything I have even the slightest interest in once it hits $20.

I think pricing is pretty good the way it is now, If prices go up, I won't stop buying but I will be more selective on what I spend money on and what games I wait for sales for.

i dont think i should be given that responsibility

$40

I almost never buy full price as it is. The problem is I never know ahead of time what a "reasonable" price is or if I'm going to enjoy the game at all. With Steam sales, I'm willing to take a chance on iffy titles just because they're so cheap. If I could set my own price, I'd probably do that more often, but on the same note, I'd likely apply that rule to the AAA titles as well. That would be bad for the developers, publishers and future of gaming.

Now, I do think it would be kind of cool if you could haggle a bit on every game purchase?

"Bioshock Infinite? Ah don't know, the last one was kind of crappy...I'll give you 30 bucks for it. The cover is cliched, too. $28.50."

I miss the nice number we had last gen, 50 seems like a good number. Doesnt seem like too much or too little to me

I would honestly pay between $5-$10 for all games if given that kind of freedom. It would probably be very bad for the industry.

I really hope that the 10$ spike for the next generation is just a rumor. I mean, how many generation cycles will it take until we just can't afford new games?

Depends on the game. There's alot of games that are really short but still sell for $60 because of gilt and flash. If I had my say they wouldn't be getting that from me. $50 is decent for most games.

In the long run it's not profitable, but as a 'one off' I am pretty sure it is (for the games the humble bundle sells). A lot of people who wouldn't have bought those games will buy them just 'cause they are part of a humble bundle. That's a lot of gained sales where they would otherwise have been none.

Either way, my post is kinda off topic.

Humble Indie Bundle works because of charities and incentives to pay more for those who want more games in the bundle. If this approach was applied to just a single AAA game with no hooks, I wouldn't trust myself to pay more than a cent. I'm human; I'm going to take advantage of situations like these for my own gain.

I wonder how Panera Bread is doing with their similar pay-what-you-want promotion on certain items in certain stores. It must be doing well if they plan on expanding it. Then again, food doesn't equal video games.

It depends on the game. I've spent over $150 on games before and I'm sure I'll do it again. Some games are worth that much to me. I can see where Garnett Lee is coming from when he says he'd pay $200 for Flower. On the other side of that extreme is $0. There are lots of free to play games but almost every single one of them isn't even worth the time to play a tutorial level. I have better things to do with my time.

I'm glad my post generated some debate. I look forward to making more posts similar to this one. Nothing makes my day like having a lively video game discussion with knowledgeable people. :D I won't hide it, I migrated from 1up, though I always visited Giant Bomb as well. I just couldn't invest myself fully into 2 sites lol.

I would buy them for $0, then after playing them if I found I enjoyed my time I would go back and donate or buy a copy based on how I felt I enjoyed the time with it.

I don't pay for things because I want to, I pay for things because I have to. That's not to say that I'm some greedy bastard that squeezes every penny (far from), more that I still have some respect for the value of money.

I think the next generation needs to implement a less strict pricing structure, with a maximum of $60. I hope we see more of an emphasis on "budget" titles like Nuts and Bolts or Sly Cooper, with proper ad campaigns and promos to back them up. It'd be nice to have games that range from $30-60, with a much looser $1-15 price range on XBLA and PSN games.

$45 is a good day 1 price for me

$39.99. I'm buying most of my games at this price these anyways.

I would pay $40 max for most games but if it's from a company/person I like, I would pay $60.

Very rarely do we get the full game at launch/release day these days. There's always a catch, content reserved for later, or content held back for DLC/Expansions. It isn't as straight forward as it used to be. 60 dollars for a PC game is out of the question for me now. I do however feel 40 bucks is fair for a lot of titles.

I have to say I agree with what you guys said. We do control our own prices already by simply holding out. We're addicts and a new game is "O'shiny!" to most of us I'm sure, so to battle the urges to buy a new thing is always ongoing, but I think that especially when we get burnt by new games because they're simply not finished, servers aren't working or whatnot else didn't answer to our expectations, waiting might just be what we need to do for more reasons than just to see lower prices.

What if games were free, and upon completion you pay what you want?

I would pay between $30-40 for a new game. $20 for one that's over six months old.

To those who say they'd just take advantage of the system, you can do that already - just pirate stuff. I have a good PC and good internet, I don't need to pay for any games right now. Popular stuff don't even take a long time to get.

I pay for games because I want more of those kinds of games. Same as why I pay for books, movies, and TV. If you don't pay (or pay so little as to not matter), then your opinion on what games are good has no impact in the marketplace. Unless you only follow popular trends, there is a strong chance that the games you like may decrease in number.

@pandakid: people are too big of jerks on the internet to make this work. Anonymity + plus social experiments like this don't seem to go well unfortunately. This would get horribly abused I'd be afraid by arbitraging resellers and cheapskates and there would be artificial tremendous downward pricing pressure. "Name your price" kind of things usually end up going that way. I think what you'd end up with is a lot less titles than there are now. Maybe your call of duties and such would be fine, but the mid tier and indie games would get slaughtered.

There also is the base assumption that people even know what fair price for a game would be. I don't think they do. Look at the Skull Girls kickstarter thing. People have no idea what games cost to make. If you don't what know what something costs to make, it's hard to know a fair price to offer for it.

What I think console should do though is loosen up some price tiers.And maybe even allow some dynamic pricing. Not everything should be a 60 dollar game and many will make more money at lower price points, and that's probably true in reverse as well (maybe a game like Skyrim should be higher than 60).