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The other day, my colleague Kevin Dent asked about the prices of next-gen games. Due to escalating development costs, he believes that there will be $60 and $80 titles. Of course there are other revenue sources to consider, like monthly subscriptions, online passes, dolly avatar clothing, etc. All that aside, I was just floored by the idea of an $80 console game. That’s like…expensive and stuff.
To be honest, the reason why the $80 price was so jarring to me was that I really haven’t been thinking about the price points for next-gen games. I’ve been more curious to learn about how publishers are going to adjust their business models because the traditional way of publishing videogames isn’t long for this world. It just never occurred to me that a publisher would think, “I know! Let’s increase the price of games by $20! That will solve all our problems!!!” I’d like to (naively) think that even the stiffest suit is more creative than that.
How much do you think next-gen games will cost? Are you ready for a world where triple-A console games cost $80? How many $80 games can thrive considering you can get a solid iOS experience for $6 or less?
I'd say $80 is too much, but then I routinely pump more money into games post release for DLC, so who am I kidding….I'm already paying that in some cases.
Hmm that would be one big jump even for certain titles. Even the yearly Madden buyers might decide it's too much.
In other words it's too much for what's offered generally. We didn't necessarily get more game or better content when the price went from $50 to $60. I foresee even less value in the age of Day 1 DLC.
Ah, yes… inflation rears it's ugly head, yet again. I think that $60 for a game is like… expensive and stuff. The last game I bought for retail was Halo Reach. All the other games I've bought since then (and a quite a few before then) have been new, but for about half the price, or used at significantly less than half the price.
As with everything (yes, even gasoline) as the price increases, the demand will decrease. This may not affect major franchises like Call of Duty, Madden and Mass Effect immediately (since these games are already pumping $80 indirectly from gamers like Nightshade mentioned), but it will seriously hurt those new franchises and the "not-so-AAA" titles that are struggling to get off the ground and find their audience.
I think the creative way they've been pushing some forms of DLC so far is a much more subtle way of getting more money without any additional effort. (damn publishers)
I hope a lot more developers heed my advice and dump their publishers and go straight to the market on their own or combine their resources to create their own publishing company.
-M
No. If that happened, I don't think I could get any new games. At least with a clear conscience. When the Apple products are causing hardware and, by association, software sales to drop because the App Store's games are so darn cheap, increasing the price will NOT solve anything.
I am not down with $80 games especially of they still plan on having retailer exclusive DLC or release day DLC. Now if they release games that are $60 but u can buy the same game with all DLC then I'll think about it.
I am a member over at cheapassgamer.com, so i most definitely will not even pay 60 bucks for a game.
Also, my mw3 disc no longer works. I can start a game of multiplayer, but it hard freezes every time the final score comes up.
Does anyone know if blockbuster games have stickers on them? Im totally thinking of swapping them out
If games cost $80 next gen, I'll be looking for Night Shade's and Rpad's review copies!
I'd wait a full year for either a GOTY edition or at that point the game should be dirty cheap.
@ Anyone
Quad core processors, which is better theoretically, unless anyone has used one (cough Ray), Nvidia, Texas Instruments, or Qualcomm?
http://www.Anandtech.com
Qualcom if you want LTE
I've only played with a Tegra 3. It really depends what your priorities are though — graphics, battery life, general purpose computing, etc. The benchmarks for the dual-core OMAP 5 look killer — beating out the Tegra 3 in some respects.
Smartguy brings up a great point about Qualcomm. Right now, it's the only one that will have an LTE radio on chip. However, if you're sticking with T-Mobile then that's a non-issue.
I hope you Knicks fans saw the game tonight. It was beautiful (well, the second half, anyway).
Now I know why they call it "Lin-sanity." You have to be insane to actually believe the hype.
-M
I agree. Not impressed.
$80 games will limit me severely to either only buying a couple games per year, going exclusively to my DS, or going broke. There is no way I could afford to buy another system and then get charged an extra $20 per game which barely ever purchase brand new anyways because that price is too steep. I see plenty of people still buying plenty of games at $80 each, but the vast majority of people simply cannot keep up with rising costs of games along with everything else. If this happened there would be some serious repercussions to the wallet sizes of video game publishers and developers.