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I love consols and computers I really do but why must they be so dear?
In my opinion, not all games are great but yet they still stay at the price of above £40. Some new PC games are around £20, a price that isn't so bad and would still give businesses a good profit. Many companies wonder why their games do not sell, could it be because most customers can only afford one or two games at a time?
Drop the price! If anyone agrees with me I will be happy to discuss it with them :)
Thanx
Johnny.
In my opinion, not all games are great but yet they still stay at the price of above £40. Some new PC games are around £20, a price that isn't so bad and would still give businesses a good profit. Many companies wonder why their games do not sell, could it be because most customers can only afford one or two games at a time?
Drop the price! If anyone agrees with me I will be happy to discuss it with them :)
Thanx
Johnny.
Well, depends how you look at it.
PC games are cheaper for a number of reasons. PC games are developed on PCs for use on PCs. Not hard to do compared with making a game on a PC for use on a Playstation. The PC game market is also highly competitive, with a truly VAST number of games available, competition equals lower prices.
But onto console games. The games aren't really that expensive. If you consider the thousands of hours put into making a game.
Lets start with that, and work up. Say a game takes 8 months to make (they often take longer), with 10 people working on it, probably on an average wage of, say, £400 a day. £400 times 10 people times 5 days a week times 32 weeks. That's £640,000 just in development labour costs. But you can't just have people working, they need stuff to work with. Development tools, office space, stationary, legal advice, communication tools etc. This sort of cost can often equal or even exceed labour costs, so let's just double the budget and plus a little to £1.4 million.
So, you've got the people with the tools to make the game. And they've made it, more or less, but it needs testing. So you employ ALPHA testers to feedback any bugs or areas of improvement. This takes a while. It also takes a lot of people. Say 20 testers on £20 an hour? Might take them 2 months of testing which adds another £118,400 to the budget.
BETA testing can often be done for next to nothing, but some companies will pay through te nose for it. EA employs an army of children to come to their development office in chertsey to test their almost complete games. The parents are compensated about £10 a night for their time, and the total cost of any one game for this manner of testing could run into well over £200k. So by this point, we're approaching the £1.8 million mark.
But say all the testing is out of the way, and the game goes gold. Now you have to print off all those cds/dvds, etc. not much for the dvds themselves, but you also need to package them. You're going to print off enough to meet demand, so you'll print off at least 1 million games. plus the packaging for these and instruction manuals, you're looking at £4 per game. £4,000,000 onto the budget. So that's almost £5,800,000 before it even gets to the store. So now the retailers come in, and have to pay to get the games into the stores, have to cover the cost of shelving the games and serving the customers, plus all their usual overheads. This will add on anotherfew quid per game, and there's a million of them. so say another £2,000,000.
£7.8 million
But also, every game has to have support. Websites designed, phonelines ready, returns policies, support etc. for any given game, you're looking well in excess of another million quid on post purchase support.
call it an even £9,000,000.
Sell the game for with both developers and retailers looking for £4 profit per item, which is fair. that's another £8,000,000.
sell at around £35, and you have to ensure you sell half the games you've produced just to reach your target.
My numbers are obviously flawed, but do bot underestimate the cost of maing games, it's actually much higher than I have stated.
PC games are cheaper for a number of reasons. PC games are developed on PCs for use on PCs. Not hard to do compared with making a game on a PC for use on a Playstation. The PC game market is also highly competitive, with a truly VAST number of games available, competition equals lower prices.
But onto console games. The games aren't really that expensive. If you consider the thousands of hours put into making a game.
Lets start with that, and work up. Say a game takes 8 months to make (they often take longer), with 10 people working on it, probably on an average wage of, say, £400 a day. £400 times 10 people times 5 days a week times 32 weeks. That's £640,000 just in development labour costs. But you can't just have people working, they need stuff to work with. Development tools, office space, stationary, legal advice, communication tools etc. This sort of cost can often equal or even exceed labour costs, so let's just double the budget and plus a little to £1.4 million.
So, you've got the people with the tools to make the game. And they've made it, more or less, but it needs testing. So you employ ALPHA testers to feedback any bugs or areas of improvement. This takes a while. It also takes a lot of people. Say 20 testers on £20 an hour? Might take them 2 months of testing which adds another £118,400 to the budget.
BETA testing can often be done for next to nothing, but some companies will pay through te nose for it. EA employs an army of children to come to their development office in chertsey to test their almost complete games. The parents are compensated about £10 a night for their time, and the total cost of any one game for this manner of testing could run into well over £200k. So by this point, we're approaching the £1.8 million mark.
But say all the testing is out of the way, and the game goes gold. Now you have to print off all those cds/dvds, etc. not much for the dvds themselves, but you also need to package them. You're going to print off enough to meet demand, so you'll print off at least 1 million games. plus the packaging for these and instruction manuals, you're looking at £4 per game. £4,000,000 onto the budget. So that's almost £5,800,000 before it even gets to the store. So now the retailers come in, and have to pay to get the games into the stores, have to cover the cost of shelving the games and serving the customers, plus all their usual overheads. This will add on anotherfew quid per game, and there's a million of them. so say another £2,000,000.
£7.8 million
But also, every game has to have support. Websites designed, phonelines ready, returns policies, support etc. for any given game, you're looking well in excess of another million quid on post purchase support.
call it an even £9,000,000.
Sell the game for with both developers and retailers looking for £4 profit per item, which is fair. that's another £8,000,000.
sell at around £35, and you have to ensure you sell half the games you've produced just to reach your target.
My numbers are obviously flawed, but do bot underestimate the cost of maing games, it's actually much higher than I have stated.
sorry for posting twice!
johnnyboy_2002 wrote:
> Thank you for responding to my message, I understand that yes but you
> do see my point don't you?
Yeah but the fact remains that £20 per game wouldn't cover the loss made on the console.
Its catch 22, you either pay more the games, or more for the console. Manufacturers choose to lower console prices because if they can get you to buy their console, you must buy their games.
Hence prices of games stay high.
> Thank you for responding to my message, I understand that yes but you
> do see my point don't you?
Yeah but the fact remains that £20 per game wouldn't cover the loss made on the console.
Its catch 22, you either pay more the games, or more for the console. Manufacturers choose to lower console prices because if they can get you to buy their console, you must buy their games.
Hence prices of games stay high.
Thank you for responding to my message, I understand that yes but you do see my point don't you?
Basically:
Consoles are sold at a loss by the makers. They therefore need to get their money back and hence the price of games remains high.
Plus little punk kids use pirate games and rob the industry of its money hence prices cannot be lowered
Consoles are sold at a loss by the makers. They therefore need to get their money back and hence the price of games remains high.
Plus little punk kids use pirate games and rob the industry of its money hence prices cannot be lowered
I love consols and computers I really do but why must they be so dear?
In my opinion, not all games are great but yet they still stay at the price of above £40. Some new PC games are around £20, a price that isn't so bad and would still give businesses a good profit. Many companies wonder why their games do not sell, could it be because most customers can only afford one or two games at a time?
Drop the price! If anyone agrees with me I will be happy to discuss it with them :)
Thanx
Johnny.
In my opinion, not all games are great but yet they still stay at the price of above £40. Some new PC games are around £20, a price that isn't so bad and would still give businesses a good profit. Many companies wonder why their games do not sell, could it be because most customers can only afford one or two games at a time?
Drop the price! If anyone agrees with me I will be happy to discuss it with them :)
Thanx
Johnny.