Reduce retail games to $49.99?

In light of the whole blocking used-games, publishers trying to get a cut from the used-games market and also what David Cage said about how much they lost on used games, what if the retail prices of video games drop down to $49.99, wouldn't that give people more of an incentive to buy the games at retail, maybe that extra 1,000,000 will have paid for the retail game if the RRP was lowered?

*The total sales include the 1,000,000 extra people that David Cage said had trophies, which were possibly from used games.

They'd still buy the used game, it'd just be $45 instead of $55.

If you take used games out of the equation entirely then it's hard to say what will end up being the de facto price point for new games. Used games apply a downward pressure on game prices (because they offer a cheaper alternative), so removing them should see prices go up. On the other hand, not being able to resell games reduces the value of the game in the first place, applying downward pressure to prices.

It's hard to predict which way that ends up balancing out, but one thing's for sure: publishers won't lower prices just because they can afford to. The price will be determined by whatever they think will make them the maximum amount of profit, as it always is.

Game prices haven't really ever gone up, yet the cost of production has ballooned. I don't see publishers charging less for their AAA titles when they can just try to eliminate the used games market.

New game prices tank like crazy within a month or two tops; just wait a month unless the game is Dark Souls or something; or if you're stupid enough to buy Call of Duty then the price on that doesn't go down so you might as well buy it at launch. Even Bioshock Infinite is now $40 despite selling pretty damn well, got Tomb Raider for $30 less than a month after release; and so on.

@gs_dan said:

This is because the consumers are by and large a jobless, penniless audience so the price can't go up; also shitty economy.

People buy games at $60. There is no reason to go back down. As other people have said, the price of physical media goes down eventually, so publishers see the sales at that price point too. In a way, it all makes sense. Milk the enthusiasts that want the game immediately, and then get the more price-conscious consumer with a low pricetag later on.

They have no reason to. People have been buying games at that price for years. It's the same reason they can afford to put a heftier price on console releases. Some people, like many of us here, will buy it on release no matter the price, to a reasonable degree, while the others will gladly wait a month to get the game on sale.

@chobobot: I think that would work now actually.

Game pricing is too inflexible and it's very old thinking. Not every game should be a 60 dollar game.

Some games should not even be 10 bucks *Cough * aliens* cough*

It still doesn't solve the problems of lending, renting, trading, selling to friends or Ebay, or what happens to current gen games when the next Gen comes out. XBox One's motto "All the problems of a PC with none of the benefits!"

@gs_dan said:

Yes they have gone up. They used to be $49.99 and are now $59.99. In some places (like Canada, for instance) a new game can be $69.99. Your defense of "b-but inflation!" might work if the average income also rose with that inflation, but the truth is that most wages are still the same as they were in the '80s, while the price of goods and products have rose exponentially.

Hah, nope. Not a chance in hell.

Only in a perfect world my friend....only in a perfect world.

50$ would be nice, for sure,

Also reducing prices based on a hunch using used game sales as evidence would be really risky.

Especially with development costs ever increasing

It isn't so much that prices need to be reduced (which is always nice) but that the prices need to be flexible and quickly changed. For the first week I wouldn't have an issue if a game is sold at $60US. Several months after release it needs to be dropped by half if not more.

Games are just like any other market commodity. They'll charge as much as they feel people are prepared to pay, and only drop prices when demand falls. Sad, but true.

How long have games been at $60, over 10 years now? Inflation alone is going to make keeping it the same, let alone pushing it down, a difficult thing to do.

What David Cage said was dumb. I played Heavy Rain with a gamefly subscription, really liked it, decided to buy it new, and then showed it off to like 3 of my friends on their ps3s. Used games never entered the equation, but 4 people got trophies in the same game between two copies, only one of which was bought at retail. They would not have gotten an extra million sales if retail was the only way to play it, I believe they might have gotten more (probably not at full price though), but not the full million. In the end there would just be a lot less people who ended up playing Heavy Rain.

That was a little off topic though. I don't see them going back to 50 at retail, not with how budgets have blown up. However if they were smart they'd cut back on digital price, because that's a more advantageous way for the consumer to buy their stuff. They have more control over how it's redistributed (unless this whole xbone thing turns out to be true), they don't have to cut the retailers in, and they save cost on the manufacturing of the physical copy.

There are more people buying games now and once the game is complete printing another copy and putting in a box is trivial, so they could lower the prices and still make more money than in the past, based on sale numbers.

Unrealistic game prices are a symptom of a bigger problem that is the high cost of production, you should treat the issue with better management and a clear vision of the market, NOT with the symptom.

That's really not true at all is it?

That's all fine and good, but you didn't at all factor in the cost of producing those extra 1 million copies. Their production costs just jumped up 50% so that they could generate an 25% more revenue. They want to maximize profit and this plan does the exact opposite