Expensive Games

[spaceyjase]

You'd know if it was a remake/update.

I'd pay £100 for a Daytona USA 'port' to a modern system (PS3 or PC preferred 'cos of the better wheel peripherals). 'tis one of a few reasons why my DC is still setup.

[northy]

This thread is based upon a fallacy that greater quality = higher price, it would be more accurate to say that greater obscurity = higher price. Rockstar are always going to make more money by selling their "generation defining" GTA games at a price which extracts the maximum revenue from the mainstream audience. Their revenues would fall if they increased their initial selling price dramatically above the standard "premium" price of £40-45.

There will always be people out there who would like to buy a game for £50+ based upon a relatively obscure genre whose audience is too small to justify a massive budget for top notch presentation and I'd say that's definitely a possibility in the future. But universally appealing games will always make more money at the standard price point.

Have a look on eBay, all of the classic 9/10 and 10/10 games sell for a pittance whilst the games which go for £50+ are usually only that price because of supply constraints.

To summarise, it'll work for niche games but not the mainstream.

[tiedtiger]

Actually, I remember reading an interesting article recently (online? In EDGE? Not sure), which discussed the fact that games are priced in such a manner that they can achieve revenues comparable to (or higher than) the film and music industries, while selling far fewer copies, so keeping the business stable while also maintaining a relatively niche audience (which is far easier to cater for than a fully mainstream one). Wish I could remember where I'd read it, now.

Me too.

Reason being that the industry is traditionally anything but stable.

[Elliott]

100 quid for a massive experience that kept on changing, but single player (read: not MMO) would be perfect for me. I'd spend double that if I could pay in installments. If Fallout 3 carried on and you could just keep on going and going then I doubt I could put a price on it.

I'd pay a large amount of money for something that provided the same amount of time spent that I actually enjoyed instead of something that has whizzy special effects and very little substance. I find the CoD4, Gears of War, etc. kind of thing very boring and formulaic, I think anything without a campaign or single player that I can really get stuck into and enjoy shouldn't cost more than £20. I don't like online gaming, being shouted at by obnoxious Xbox addicts is NOT my idea of fun and paying for a 'full' game based mostly on multiplayer is a ridiculous concept for me. £20 seems perfect for most of what comes out these days, as seen by how prices gravitate to that within a month or so.

A well made sports game with a massive amount of stuff to do (read: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 and 2005) I'd be happy to pay more than £40 more, and I rarely feel short changed buying stuff like Lumines, Geo Wars, Hexic, Peggle and Puyo Puyo reissues whether they cost 400 MS points, 800 MS points or £40 for a proper disc. If it's a really good puzzle game that I can spend hours having fun with then I can barely put a price on that, it depends on the production values and the concept but I'm happy to pay a lot for those.

[Dandy_Sephy]

There will always be people out there who would like to buy a game for £50+ based upon a relatively obscure genre whose audience is too small to justify a massive budget for top notch presentation and I'd say that's definitely a possibility in the future. But universally appealing games will always make more money at the standard price point.

I'd agree with this, probably because its going to cost me £50 a time to get the upcoming 360 shooters

[Troublegum]

I wouldn't pay £100 for a single game because I'm not a fucking idiot.

£100+ games already exist but are really cleverly disguised, such as the previously mentioned MMOs with their subscription models, Namco games that require you to pay to unlock content that's already on the disc or, in fact, any game with paid downloadable content. I don't even pay £35-£40 for new releases even though I can afford them (OH, I'M SORRY, I'M SO RICH) because I can wait what seems like only a matter of weeks before the price is slashed.

It's all very well saying "But I put a hundred hours into it" but, and this is been touched on by previous posts, how do you know you are going to invest that much time before the event? Every game purchase is a gamble even when it comes to established franchises and sequels. My brother is a Gears of War nut, he put hundreds of hours into the multiplayer, so you would figure that he would do the same for the sequel, right? He fucking hates it. Something to do with the balance of weapons, matchmaking and lag or something... I don't know, I don't game online. He actually went back to the first game and left the sequel gathering dust. If you had asked him beforehand if he would pay £100 for it, he probably would have bitten your arm off. Now, however, not so much.

And 'Special' and 'Limited' editions can cock off, too.

[roadkill]

I think Mr Pickford nailed it with the question of not actually being able to tell in advance if you're being ripped off. The reason people don't mind this with hardware is it's tangible. Then there's the collectors market is as much hardware lust as anything else. The joy of the rare.

Personally I must have spent more than £100 on Puzzle Bobble in various incarnations, but had you asked me to pay that amount before ever playing it I would never have bothered.

Rather than focussing on a single upfront price I think you have to look at something closer to a subscription with regular recurring payments, tournament fees and so on. The western games market seems to be increasingly resistant to actually paying for games in any shape or form, and I suspect this will cause an explosion of ad supported titles.

[therealjohnpeat]

I'd guesstimate I've spent a little over £400 on World of Warcraft (Game+2xpacs+subs) so £100 doesn't sound like a lot does it?

BUT - I've had WAY over 4000 hours of "entertainment" from that and NO standalone game could even begin to offer that.

In fact - if you divide it up - I've paid 10p/hour which means a £40 game needs to offer 400 hours - and even £3.49 for Bioshock has to offer 35 hours (which it won't)!!

Also the whole idea of charging such a large sum upfront is TOTALLY the wrong approach for game developers - we need to be moving to a model where you get the initial game cheaply (or even free) and then pay for the priveledge of continued play (thus rewarding good games and punishing shit ones) surely?

[aeternum_vale]

You'd know if it was a remake/update.

I would? I played Halo2 for a year pretty much every single night. Halo 3 I finished the campaign, played about for a week or so online then never bothered with it.

Same with Gears, played the first to death, the 2nd I've not even played online.

News I hear from CoD land is that 5 isn't as good as 4 in either story or online...

Burnout Paradise isn't a patch on Revenge

Ridge 7 isn't as good as 6

Perfect Dark Zero is utter trash compared to the original....

[Dandy_Sephy]

Burnout Paradise isn't a patch on Revenge

Funniest thing I;ve seen all day

[Timmo]

You have a great sense of humour.

[aeternum_vale]

Funniest thing I;ve seen all day

I know, I laughed when I typed it out. God forbid in a thread asking "would YOU pay £100 a game?" a valid point is brought up about you never knowing if you'll like the game to begin with and is answered with a reply about my own personal preferences.

Simple answer, no.

[bcass]

I would? I played Halo2 for a year pretty much every single night. Halo 3 I finished the campaign, played about for a week or so online then never bothered with it.

Same with Gears, played the first to death, the 2nd I've not even played online.

News I hear from CoD land is that 5 isn't as good as 4 in either story or online...

Burnout Paradise isn't a patch on Revenge

Ridge 7 isn't as good as 6

Perfect Dark Zero is utter trash compared to the original....

Those games are sequels, not remakes. Two different things.

[bcass]

To reiterate: after a couple of years they reach a stable price

That's still not wholey true. There are potentially two phases to price decreases of a PCB - first, the sort of thing you refer to where it settles over time. You can then reasonably expect another drop once the game is ported or emulated.

With regards to the Ibara port, someone on the shmups forum found a way to de-interlace the image which improves the picture quality substantially. Install it to HDD and you can also eliminate the loading times too.

[MK-1601]

I think there's other ways (than peripherals, hardware, or hours of gameplay) that you could add value to a game to justify a £100 price tag.

How about personalisation? If you pay extra you can get a custom-made, one-of-a-kind avatar (or car or spaceship or whatever), actually made by the artists based on your specifications. I think there are games where people would definitely pay for that.

[aeternum_vale]

Those games are sequels, not remakes. Two different things.

I certainly wouldn't layout £100 on a remake if I already had the game, that's just stupid. Also it's not like during the update process things can't get ruined.

[acidbearboy]

I honestly don't think this idea could work without being able to play the game and know how much entertainment you'd be getting from it (still difficult to judge even after playing some games). You'd also have to know that it wouldn't be reduced at a later date. I was interested enough to splash out £30 on the PAL release of REZ for the Dreamcast judging by the reviews and articles I'd read about it. It since went on to become my favourite videogame that I'd gladly pay £100 to play forever more. I'd have never chanced it for £100 though, probably not even after playing the demo that's now available on XBLA in HD.

[northy]

I think there's other ways (than peripherals, hardware, or hours of gameplay) that you could add value to a game to justify a £100 price tag.

How about personalisation? If you pay extra you can get a custom-made, one-of-a-kind avatar (or car or spaceship or whatever), actually made by the artists based on your specifications. I think there are games where people would definitely pay for that.

This is definitely going to be a niche revenue stream. People are used to getting it for free with Miis, Avatars and the whatever Sony's monstrosities are called.

[Dandy_Sephy]

That's still not wholey true. There are potentially two phases to price decreases of a PCB - first, the sort of thing you refer to where it settles over time. You can then reasonably expect another drop once the game is ported or emulated.

With regards to the Ibara port, someone on the shmups forum found a way to de-interlace the image which improves the picture quality substantially. Install it to HDD and you can also eliminate the loading times too.

True fact: I had just done this to Mushihimesama, and literally had Ibara in the drive ready to rip and hexedit when I came across the forum post listing the pcb. It still seemed like a good buy then, and now I have it (except my monitor is rotated the wrong way so i need to rotate it again). As for eumlation I agree, but aside from it being some time until it's emulated (there are no SH3 roms yet - at least not in the mame project, nevermind working SH3 emulation), there will be an initial period where the board should stay at the same price for a week or two. It's unlikely to drop overnight simply due to a rom existing. It's certainly not happened with naomi titles, and many 2d titles are almost flawless in nullDC

[Dandy_Sephy]

I know, I laughed when I typed it out. God forbid in a thread asking "would YOU pay £100 a game?" a valid point is brought up about you never knowing if you'll like the game to begin with and is answered with a reply about my own personal preferences.

Simple answer, no.

oh I understand and agree with the point about not knowing what you are getting, just not so with the opinion. but thats fine, I've no reason to take issue with your opinion even though i don't agree

[Stanley]

£100 for a game. Sounds like an excellent idea. Someone inform Sony.

[bcass]

I certainly wouldn't layout £100 on a remake if I already had the game, that's just stupid. Also it's not like during the update process things can't get ruined.

Depends if it's being handled by a reputable developer. Also, I don't think there's anything stupid about remaking old games. There are lots of old games out there that are screaming out for a remake that would benefit hugely from the trimmings of modern technology. It's a shame that more of gamings past isn't explored as there are a lot of ideas out there that have been forgotten in the anals of history.

[MK-1601]

This is definitely going to be a niche revenue stream. People are used to getting it for free with Miis, Avatars and the whatever Sony's monstrosities are called.

Yeah, but they tend to be a bit Mr Potatohead looking.

It would be good if you could get something textured and modeled from scratch in the art style of the game. Especially if the game has a very distinctive style.

It would be niche, yeah. But particularly in MMOs there's a lot of value in having something exclusive.

[roadkill]

I'd argue it's not the developers role to actually provide the artists, but they should certainly allow a player economy to create such things, with the developer taking a tiny cut each time.

For example player X could pay player Y £100 to create a character model for them, but each time you want to use a character model (that was created using some exporter) in the game you have to pay the developer a fiver.

[SaintM]

I don't understand what the point is.

'Budget' games already exist, so are we not already paying a premium for perceived quality?

[therealjohnpeat]

I've also just realised the OP/title implies that expensive=quality - which is just about totally untrue and a totally pointless line of debate in itself.

We live in a world where the cost of a thing is far more to do with it's perceived value/brand/status symbol nature than anything about it's construction or materials - which explains why someone spend £30 on mario Kart Wii for my Xmas present and I'm getting far more enjoyment from Trackmania Nations (free)

[James Lyon]

Thoughts?

So users are buying less games for more money? Won't that just stagnate the industry? And a high price point would be based on what the publishers think you should potentially get out of it, not what you actually will. There's not a person in this forum who wouldn't feel royally ripped off after getting bored of a hundred quid game thirty hours into a five hundred hour experience.

I wouldn't buy a game worth £100 if you paid me (unless you paid me £100, and even then I'd probably spend it on preowned games instead).

[J0e Musashi]

As an import gamer I've paid £100+ for way more games than I care to remember...

Nowadays I buy largely used games only and I rarely spend more than £40 on a title. I've had brand new MS6 and FOTNS AW kits at £600+ each however.

[Couch Corpse]

Yep. I spent a ton for an xbox and pads just for Halo and it was worth every penny and Perfect Dark on import before that, and a cast before that for Soul Calibur. I'm sure people have spent a fortune on Samba De Amigo and Steal Battalion and more recently Rock Band, a friend has spent nearly 1000 on RB at this stage. Most of the games I've spent a lot on have given years of entertainment.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Sorry, £1000? Thats a joke right?