Are game prices going up?

[Scrubking]

"Hot on the heels of last week's story of increasing game development costs, and the more recent news that the Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition is projected to possibly sell for as high as $80, today CNN Money is reporting that some publishers are considering raising prices on games:

To date, Activision has given the clearest signal of impending price increases. Speaking at a Bank of America Securities investment conference last week, chairman and CEO Robert Kotick said Activision would raise wholesale prices on all titles released for next generation systems by $3 to $5.

DOOM 3, also published by Activision, has been selling quite well even though it's priced at $55. But other AAA titles such as Rome: Total War and Halo 2 are priced at $50. Meanwhile, collector's editions of World of Warcraft and EverQuest II are both priced at $80 and $90 respectively (while the standard editions are priced at $50). The article mentions rising development costs and online gaming as perpetuating factors for price hikes, and financial analysts call for prices to rise by as much as $10 for AAA titles."

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=7125

[opportunity777]

Game prices in general are down, and that is why they are offering these collector's editions, so they can recover some of the lost revenue from having to lower prices on other products.

It's the same thing the PC gaming companies have been doing for years, and now console games are starting to catch on.

The Japanese have been doing this for a long time as well.

[Gothic Walrus]

Does it really matter?

We're Cheap Ass Gamers...we'll just wait until prices drop and pay $10 for the game instead of however much it's released for. :D

[Mospeada_21]

Sorry to hear about Activision's announcement. I was hoping for a fairly quick price drop on X-Men Legends. Guess I'll just wait longer.....

Ubisoft titles seems to drop pretty quick.

[Scrubking]

Honestly, I think there is some major corruption going on in the gaming industry - especially publishers. *cough*VU*cough*

I mean they spend millions on craptacular games like catwoman and then say that game prices need to be increased because they are losing money. Why are you raising prices if it's your fault you made a piece of shit game?

[opportunity777]

Actually they spend a ton of money on Crapwoman because it's a movie license, and regardless if the game comes out good or not they are going to come out ahead.

[hiccupleftovers]

Does it really matter?

We're Cheap Ass Gamers...we'll just wait until prices drop and pay $10 for the game instead of however much it's released for. :D

True.

[Grave_Addiction]

All this means to me is that I'll have to wait a little bit longer to get games at "my" price.

These publishers can raise prices all they want, but it won't change the fact that the smart consumers out there will just continue to wait or find other ways to get the game at the price they want.

[Wshakspear]

I think what Midway and Bungie/Microsoft are doing is the best way: Give a limited/collectors edition as a Pre-order only incentive. Im sure they have gotten quite a few CAG's to pay a bit MORE than full price just to get some exclusive that are the equivelent of $.25 .

Wait...i just said Midway was doing something smart...scary

[Trakan]

All this means to me is that I'll have to wait a little bit longer to get games at "my" price.

These publishers can raise prices all they want, but it won't change the fact that the smart consumers out there will just continue to wait or find other ways to get the game at the price they want.

Yeah, but then there's the stupid people who will pay 80 bucks for a game........

[danh920]

$80 was the cost of chrono trigger way back when, what's most shocking is that games have stayed at $50 for this long

[msdmoney]

I don't think normal game prices are increasing, but developers and publishers are looking at the dvd industry and getting smart. By adding a couple things or just making a better case, and labeling it a collector's edition they can get many more people to buy it, and at a huge price increase.

I know I am a sucker for having the ultimate, director's cut, uber, limited collector's edition for dvd's and would probably do the same for games.

[dcfox]

All this means to me is that I'll have to wait a little bit longer to get games at "my" price.

These publishers can raise prices all they want, but it won't change the fact that the smart consumers out there will just continue to wait or find other ways to get the game at the price they want.

Yeah, but then there's the stupid people who will pay 80 bucks for a game........
Stupid rich people, you mean. Stupid poor people like myself have no choice but to wait for price drops and sales. So in a sense being poor has made me smarter.

[Admiral Ackbar]

See I think the opposite. First, I bought Doom 3 for $35. Lists prices may go up but it appears that street prices are going down.

Secondly, we have seen a rush of value titles this year. Games $20 or under. That's because they know they can't compete with the games with large hype so they reduce their prices to remain more competative.

[ElwoodCuse]

I bet if you account for inflation they have actually been steadily declining for yeras.

For some reason I remember a brief time (around when Gran Turismo 3 came out) where EB for some reason was charging $52.99 for new games. This lasted like a month or two and then all of sudden they went back to $49.99.

[daphatty]

Some games are worth the price tag. Most aren't. Doom 3 IMO isn't worth $55. However, I would (and probably will) pay $80 for WoW Collector's Edition. Hell, I just paid full price for Donkey Conga. It's all about what the game means to you.

[Reality's Fringe]

I remember when Doom 3 got its own display at Gamestop (before I quit), and it was like "Only $54.99!" I couldn't freakin' believe it. I didn't know who the hell would pay $55 for a game, but sure enough, on release day, there were tons. If I get an XBox, I'll just play it there.

[BlueStorm781]

$80 was the cost of chrono trigger way back when, what's most shocking is that games have stayed at $50 for this long

The (near) $80 cost was really attributed to the cost to produce the cartridge. If you remember, N64 games also debuted at prices upwards of $70, and eventually came down. The prices were higher then due to what it cost to make the product , especially when it came to Nintendo's cartridge-based systems.

Really, the cost has been lower than it has been in the past. Sure, most games debut at a $50 price point, but we've seen $40 and even $30 debut price points. And now we have "budget" titles (games that debut under $20), which was something we have never seen in the cartridge generation unless the game was a few years old.

It would be nice to see cheaper games a lot more often, but that's really how Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft is making their money, is through the licensing, which keeps the games at the prices they are. As for the PC market, they can charge whatever, since there's no licensing costs, just the production cost.

I think that Half-Life 2 may be at $80 because it's going to be a big special edition package. Really, that's the only best explanation of the cost. There may also be a $50 version available, but since there's still no real date of release, we still don't know the details.

[Kaijufan]

I bet if you account for inflation they have actually been steadily declining for yeras.

For some reason I remember a brief time (around when Gran Turismo 3 came out) where EB for some reason was charging $52.99 for new games. This lasted like a month or two and then all of sudden they went back to $49.99.
I remember when my Gamestop sold all of their new games for $55 (or whatever the SRP was +5).

[Final Starman]

Heh, when they did sell games for $55 I just told them how the BB and CC down the street had it for $50 so I got the PM.

[Mospeada_21]

$5 difference is no big deal. But the irony is Catwoman saw the light of day, but Kill Bill did not.

[Vtdgnca]

I don't think so but, back then when Gamestop was still funcoland I remember buying a GH's version of chrono cross for 24.99 damn shaq-fuing bastards.

[Scrubking]

$5 difference is no big deal.

Right, I wish everthing was raised $5, after all it's no big deal and we can all afford it. :roll:

[epobirs]

The constant whine about rising development cost does not hold up under analysis. The productions may be getting bigger but not in every sense. The same FMV rendering that once took a million dollar farm can now be matched on a couple dozen off the shelf PCs. Sequences that were beyond the reach of $100 movies in the 90's are now doable by garage operations.

The most important factor is one-time costs vs. ongoing costs. Even if your production costs increased by a multiplier of five, for instance going from a $1 million budget to a $5 million budget, what matter much more in the life of a hit game is the repeating costs. The primary repeating cost is distribution media. For console games this has decresed by several orders of magnitude. What was measured in tens of dollars in the SNES days is now measured in pennies.

For a big hit game where a high production budget is justified, this low cost of distribution is the key. Once a game has done sufficient business at the introductory price to cover the production costs and satisfy those gamers with more money than patience there is now reason not to then lower the price and reach a much larger audience. If the game is such a big seller it reaches profitability well before the price cut is indicated, that's great. But no publisher can be so foolish as to believe that consumers don't know that a year old game plays as well as a new one.

[Kaijufan]

Heh, when they did sell games for $55 I just told them how the BB and CC down the street had it for $50 so I got the PM.
When they sold games for $55 I was to young to think of price matching.

[neocisco]

The constant whine about rising development cost does not hold up under analysis. The productions may be getting bigger but not in every sense. The same FMV rendering that once took a million dollar farm can now be matched on a couple dozen off the shelf PCs. Sequences that were beyond the reach of $100 movies in the 90's are now doable by garage operations.

The most important factor is one-time costs vs. ongoing costs. Even if your production costs increased by a multiplier of five, for instance going from a $1 million budget to a $5 million budget, what matter much more in the life of a hit game is the repeating costs. The primary repeating cost is distribution media. For console games this has decresed by several orders of magnitude. What was measured in tens of dollars in the SNES days is now measured in pennies.

Me am confused. :?
For a big hit game where a high production budget is justified, this low cost of distribution is the key. Once a game has done sufficient business at the introductory price to cover the production costs and satisfy those gamers with more money than patience there is now reason not to then lower the price and reach a much larger audience. If the game is such a big seller it reaches profitability well before the price cut is indicated, that's great. But no publisher can be so foolish as to believe that consumers don't know that a year old game plays as well as a new one.

[sying]

"Hot on the heels of last week's story of increasing game development costs, and the more recent news that the Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition is projected to possibly sell for as high as $80, today CNN Money is reporting that some publishers are considering raising prices on games:

To date, Activision has given the clearest signal of impending price increases. Speaking at a Bank of America Securities investment conference last week, chairman and CEO Robert Kotick said Activision would raise wholesale prices on all titles released for next generation systems by $3 to $5.

DOOM 3, also published by Activision, has been selling quite well even though it's priced at $55. But other AAA titles such as Rome: Total War and Halo 2 are priced at $50. Meanwhile, collector's editions of World of Warcraft and EverQuest II are both priced at $80 and $90 respectively (while the standard editions are priced at $50). The article mentions rising development costs and online gaming as perpetuating factors for price hikes, and financial analysts call for prices to rise by as much as $10 for AAA titles."

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=7125

Games will cost a whole lot more to produce when Blu-ray disks are going to come out. Goodbye wallet. Sony will make a fortune by just selling the hardware that makes the disks, Jeez.

[sj41]

It really doesn't make sense anymore for the whining about development costs. As time goes on, more and more people are getting into gaming and are buying more and more games, and are giving more and more money for crappy and great games.

I'm not sure if the ESPN series has been profitable or not, but I know that they have sold more copies this year than in years past, which means that they probally did better because now, more people have an ESPN game and might buy one from another year sometime in the future and if they sold 2.5 more copies this year than they did last year, then they still made about the same amount of money.

The more people who get into gaming, the better prices on games will be, IMO.