At GDC last week, high profile game designer and head of Disney's Junction Point Studios, Warren Spector, called the industry out over game pricing. Using other big media as a measure and drawing attention to the disparity in the price of games versus books, movies, and CDs, Spector suggests that dropping the price point of videogames could stimulate growth in the industry.
Source: GameIndustry.Biz [ more info ]

Oh common sense how I enjoy your occassional visits. It's just too bad that the people who should be listening... aren't. I've always just kind of accepted the somewhat high cost of videogames. But Why? I don't go to the movies regularly because tickets are $10 each and concessions are ridiculous. I don't buy CDs because $12 seems like too much to pay for 3 songs I "might" like out of an entire album. And books are only $6, but I rarely buy one unless it's something I'm really, really interested in. Yet videogames are $60 and I don't hesitate to plop down the cash even if there is only a chance I'll like it.

I can't say I'd buy more games if they were less. But, I can tell you I paid subscription fees to MMOs because it was "cheaper than buying a new game" and I've spent plenty on downloadable music for Rock Band because the price "is right" for what I want out of it. There are so many games out there right now that I'd love to play. But, it's just too expensive to buy them all (and I hate renting games).

Now, it may be a bit biased and unfair of me to depict the stereotypical gaming exec as having so much money he's got nothing better to do with it than to shove it in his ears and smile ignorantly in the face common sense. But, I'm willing to accept the potential fallout if it means championing the idea of lowering videogame prices in order to make them more accesible.

I'm all for lowering the price if it can be done. I wonder what is the ratio between average cost of production and sale price for video games. At least with books you don't have frustrated coders staring at screens 14 hours a day wondering why their code won't compile correctly.

I would love for the price point on video games to be lower but I think the comparison is not accurate. Movies, for example, are a one-time cost of a one-time consumption. Compared to board games, which cost about as much as a video game, the comparison is more apt because you have a one-time cost of repeat consumption.

To me books, movies, music and games all provide an equal amount of entertainment. However, they all provide entertainment at different times.
Games for when I just want to sit in my chair, drink coke and relax with little effort.
Movies are for when I feel like relaxing but be social at the same time. I.e. go to the movies with a friend.
Music is more like background noise, which I get for free from online radios and need no paying for.
Books are mainly for travelling and when time needs to be spent with nothing better to do.
Therefore, while I do enjoy all 4 sources of entertainment, I'd rather pay more for games because I use this source of entertainment in a span of time which when put into an equation, is equal to less $$$ per hour than the alternatives. So the initial price is higher, but when looking at money spent on entertainment over a couple of months it's cheaper to spend money on a game. At least for me it is.

Hah! That's great. I was actually just talking to a friend about game pricing just before I came to the site to check this morning's comic.

Did you hear about the big announcement? The Playstation Price Drop?
Get ready. This is going to blow your mind. Sony finally has it figured out!
The Playstation 2 is now $99.

It's getting to the point now, where I'm enjoying reading the hardware sales figures and then pointing and laughing at them. As everyone in the world (except Sony employees of course) is saying that a PS3 Price Drop would be good for everyone, especially Sony, they're sticking their money in their ears and yelling "LA LA LA LA LA! We can't hear you. First-Party-Software-Exclusives-Market-Leaders-Ten-Year-System-LA LA LA LA!"

I think it would be good if we saw more games launching at $50 or less for the 360 and PS3. I understand that production costs have gone up, but the market for video games has also increased as it's become more main stream. I'm also not a huge fan of this new trend of releasing games incomplete and charging $5-10 for content that was originally intended to be in the game, or in some cases, the code is even already on the disk and you're paying to unlock it. I hate hate hate being nickel and dimed.

They're practically comedians at this point.

Reading a book once is a choice. You can choose to read the book again the same way you can choose to play a game just once. My favorite book is Animal Farm. I can't tell you how many times I've read it over the years. I don't rebuy the book each time.

-----

In 2007 the average cost to make and market a major film was $107 million.
The average cost to develop, publish, and promote a game is $10-$50 million.

Game developers ARE aware currently that what the game costs does impact how many people buy the game.

PC game developers are aware that most people just do not upgrade the PC just to play the game(especialy in a recession)

the problem seems to be how efectivly they can controll what their marketing guys do.

WOW that can literaly throw away cash(In the form of cash dividends payed out by the parent company) charges you for each expansion.(to be fair I own enough of the stock that its silly. were literaly swaping cash each quarter. you would think it would be cheeper for them to just keep the dividend and give me a payed account, Especialy since they pay me in $ US not Euros)

EVE when they shiped the box set to the latest expansion charged you 39.99USD . . . but included the full game and 2 months game time and they dont charge for new content, (wich is a good thing, on average they have less actual content with each "expansion" than you used to get with the small expansions that Sony used to to with EQ, this latest expansion is suposed to be the largest one so far, but given that they use a random generator to create the new "space" created you honestly have to wonder how many man decades the 300+ man staff spends spend giveing eachother piggyback rides every month)

This idea is gaining serious traction I believe in some circles. Look what Valve did with Left 4 Dead on steam. Those were some serious numbers.
Source: Joystiq [ more info ]




[ Link corrected as per the forum rules. ]

The wise gamer buys used anyway - almost every time I've purchased a game brand new at full price, I've been disappointed.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed is a great example. I love Star Wars. I wanted to play the game just for the story, and in this case I felt it would be okay to pay full price so I didn't read spoilers on the web. I absolutely don't feel as if I got $60 worth of gaming goodness out of the game, though - the gameplay was repetitive and not even as fun, in my opinion, as older games like Jedi Knight. I couldn't return the game, so I was forced to accept trade-in credit of around $20. Lame.

Here's the way to do it:

GameStop (and their owned entities) has a 7-day return policy on used games. I am not kidding. Since learning this, I can tell you there have been dozens of times when I've bought a brand new game used (perhaps for $55 instead of $60), tried it out for a few days, and then made the choice whether to keep it or return it. There's no restocking fee. Better still, if you have their card you get a 10% discount.

In a sense this allows you to "Test drive" a game. Pretty sweet. It's tough to find a used copy of a brand new game, but if you live in a big city with several GameStop stores, it doesn't take long to make a few phone calls, and they've always been really nice about putting the game aside for me to pick up the same day.

This is the exact reason I have not purchased a PS3, Wii, or Xbox360. Plunking down the money for the system, at least in the Wii's case, isn't so bad, but paying $60 per title is just not something I will do in this day and age. When I boxed up my PS2 a while back I started reading again with the spare time I spent on playing the PS2. I dropped about $150 dollars on book in '08 and that would have been 3 games for 1 year. Instead I read at least 2 books a month and spent less money.

As far as PC games go, the only two I pay for are WoW and Eve. I enjoy both, the companies are always working on the games to make them better, and in Eee's case new content is %100 free. I love playing little flash games and all the freebies you can found out there and I don't have to have a $2000 computer upgrading every 6 months to keep up with the latest and greatest games so it all works out wonderfully in the end.

Great Comic!