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"The Farce That Is The Prices Of Games Today"

I can remember when I was about 7 or 8 (late 80s) owning a ZX Spectrum +2 and how great it was to have a great library of games in my collection. I think that I oqned somewhere in the region of about 300+ games. I was able to own this sheer amount of games because of one small factor - the games were cheap to buy. Yes I bet everyone who owned a machine like that had a very large collection of games to. Because back in those days games were as cheap as £5 with some being as cheap as £0.99. But nowadays you are lucky to find a good game at anything cheaper than £19.99. For example Rollcage 2 is a great game, released brand new at the aformentioned price, but we also see games being released brand new at £29.99 (Syphon Filter 2 is a great example of this). My only wish is that games publishers should release games, brand new, at at least £10. I would be happy to pay that for a new game. If this was done then the problem of Piracy could be abolished as people would shell out the extra couple of pounds to purchase the 'original' game instead of giving the money to the down right dirty pirates who are demorilising the market as it is. So if this was achieved then maybe the games publishers will recieve more money from their games sales because more people will buy the games due to the fact that they are so cheap and thus the money can be put into good use because the publishers will be able to afford to make more great games to be released in the future.

Actually, companies like Sony make a loss from selling hardware units, which they then gather back from software sales.

Sure, distributers and retailers always make the largest part of the profit with any product, but there is money from all the games and hardware coming in to the manufacturers, which snowballs together, and is far from insignificant in terms of shelf price.

You know, in the year that Titanic came out, so did Gran Turismo. The film cost 400 million, while the game cost less than a tenth of that. Yet, the game still made a profit of 30 million more than the film. This is despite that the film has merchandise attached.

So where does this money go. As it happens, Soup Dragon is wrong to think that the developers get it. Although this is partially true for big selling games, for most gamers, the distributers get the most profit. The only exception to this in Nintendo who get money for making carts for games (£5 each(!) compared to 1p per CD).

Rav

Cutting profit margins would be a start. Aren't those corporate bosses rich enough yet?

Soup Dragon has got some really good points, but there are still a few ways to reduce the price of games. Firstly, using CDs instead of cartridges. One of the reason the N64's games cost more than the PSX's on average is that carts cost loads to produce, while CDs cost 1p each for Sony to make. The reason for using carts is mainly so that Nintendo can get money from people who publish games or the N64, but this results in high prices.

Also, prices have been forced up by piracy. If there was no piracy, then more people would buy "real" games, and this would mean that companies could sell games for less, and still get just as much profit.

There are probaly other ways to reduce the prices of games, so let's hear your suggestions please.

Rav

But when you talk about game prices, in the days of Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, yes, that long ago, games were already selling at £50 a time, and over the last 5 - 10 years have creeped up very slowly if at all. Heck, look at the £30 games, you could expect to pay that in the hay day of Master System and NES, take into account inflation and we were probably being ripped off more then than now, even with the more primitive technology, now it is more expensive to produce games, with licenses, research and high tech motion capture, animation and FMV, etc.
When selling at lower prices, quality will no doubt be sacrificed in production, and if lastability of games were to be maintained, we wouldn't need to buy much more often, so despite an increased market width, either the companies or consumers would be worse off, if not both.

I can remember when I was about 7 or 8 (late 80s) owning a ZX Spectrum +2 and how great it was to have a great library of games in my collection. I think that I oqned somewhere in the region of about 300+ games. I was able to own this sheer amount of games because of one small factor - the games were cheap to buy. Yes I bet everyone who owned a machine like that had a very large collection of games to. Because back in those days games were as cheap as £5 with some being as cheap as £0.99. But nowadays you are lucky to find a good game at anything cheaper than £19.99. For example Rollcage 2 is a great game, released brand new at the aformentioned price, but we also see games being released brand new at £29.99 (Syphon Filter 2 is a great example of this). My only wish is that games publishers should release games, brand new, at at least £10. I would be happy to pay that for a new game. If this was done then the problem of Piracy could be abolished as people would shell out the extra couple of pounds to purchase the 'original' game instead of giving the money to the down right dirty pirates who are demorilising the market as it is. So if this was achieved then maybe the games publishers will recieve more money from their games sales because more people will buy the games due to the fact that they are so cheap and thus the money can be put into good use because the publishers will be able to afford to make more great games to be released in the future.