Impulse Power

That a good start, that should be standard. I know the 360 has XBLA games for $5-10,but there is alot of potential space to fill between a $10 XBLA game and the average $60 disk based game.I don't belive the cost of a physical disk is too limiting either. I just bought Lost Season 2 for $60 CDN and that has 7 DVD disks.

 

For me? Yes.

I'd actually consider buying an Xbox 360 if the Premium were $299 or less.

I'd own one right now if it was at $249 or less.

PS3? I'd love to buy it, but I won't until 2010 considering the price. The only console I'm definitely getting this generation is the Wii.

 

What other entertainment medium gives you 20+ hours of unique content for that $60? How many hours of movies could that get you at the cinema? How many CDs? You get a heck of a lot for your money, especially in some games that are either 100 hours long or have lots of replay value. Back in the day, when games came on tapes, magazines suggested that value for money was good if you got an hour's game for each £1 spent. People should divide the price they pay on the number of hours entertainment they get to determine value, just like choosing a $2 pot of 250 grams coffee granules or a $5 pot of 1kg coffee, and then compare to other media. Games are probably the best value media entertainment out there.

 

Series (TV, Animes) ?

 

In the UK yes, consider in the USA since the last gen the value of the dollar has plummeted, the console game prices I think are starting to reflect that. The value of the pound is roughly the same it has been for a little while now (albeit with inflation at about 2%). Since 1999, that doesn't justify a full £10 mark up.

 

On average I listen much more any CD than any game and they cost 1/4 of the price, it is better I stop playing because it doesnt give me the better value.

What about books a well read one will probably make you need to read it for a long time. Plus many of them does have a much better "reread" value than most games do have a replay value.

Maybe it is just me but I can see a a big diference between coffee and art.

We most remember that we are not talking about practical things but from what gives you pleasure and that is really hard to price but if you can possible sell much more and do much more proffit then your price is to high and this is happening today.

 

A CD lasts about one hour, normally about 45 mins. Going by Play, probably the best prices in the UK, the price for new albums is £8-10. Games can normally be bought new for £30. Thus you can get 3 CDs for the price of a new game - 20 hours of fun instead of 3 hours of music. Then you have to measure in reuseability, which ranges a lot between people, music and games and so isn't an easy metric.

Well sure, but the production of a book doesn't require $millions to be spent on employing developers! Seriously, would anyone expect games to be price comparable to books? I also find replaying a game is more fun than rereading a book, where in a book the story is known and so the experience is very different, whereas in games it's the gameplay that's fun and that remains the same for longer (until you've played it to death and are bored!)

It isn't art, it's entertainment. You have x amount of dollars to spend on enjoying yourself, and thus any activity's value can be measured by how much fun you have for your dollar. Gaming needs to be compared to other leisure past-times, like tennis, golf, going to the cinema, going out for a meal, country walks, karting, photography, etc.

Some are cheaper than others, and some are way more expensive. Gaming is pretty cheap by comparison, especially when you consider the effort needed to develop the games. And that's not even factoring budget gaming. Buy a console midway into it's life when it's not at launch prices, and buy Platinum hits at £10 a pop. It's definitely no worse than buying CDs or movies, and far better value than going out for a meal or the cinema or clubbing etc. Anyone who grumbles about the cost of games needs to look at it in relation to all the other alternatives they could spend their money on. And if they feel books are better value and that's all that matters to them, go buy books instead of consoles and quite whinging! I can't see any reason for people to complain about game prices, other than they're unwilling to pay a reasonable price for the work the devs perform.

 

I should have read the thread title better!

Yes! Next-gen games need to be $50 or less! $55, tops!

Hopefully Sony will follow my standard.

 

I tryed to show that there is no metric because if there is such a metric for pleasure then you could easly convert it to know what on should bet on.

Many time CDs have such production values and they sell at the same price of books and DVDs (at least here).

Depend on the person, book, mood...

This can be a whole new question, but I really consider it art (just like CDs, movies, books...), althought I would like to know why you dont consider it art.

Yes, but people dont do the maths and say I get x with A, y with B and z with C so I should do B. If they have the money they will just do the one they prefer, regardless of value. And if we are talking of value why not put social, cultural, health, fitness ... benefficts in there this would bring games value down , there is just no way of getting a value rating to those things.

That is what I do many times, but there is quite a few cons against that, namely there is games that you cant fing, it take to much time, you will have much worst online (much less people/much harder to fight...), the ration of good games/%"@£§$ games is much worst (specialy very bad for new gamers), there is games which prices just dont go down, prices arent equal in all stores... Try that and you will see that it isnt a good soluction.


Anyway my point is symple that you cant have a single metric that you can just get a cross value and just go with it.

But we are going of topic because the question is (with all gens): if the games (+ HW) is cheaper than it is (will be) would the market be bigger? My answer is yes, for the above reasons and a few others already mentioneed in others threads.

There is also one more question that it is if companys would still make money and I strogly belive that if thing are made in a good way they would in fact do much more money. (I remember a report on IGN here they said that the gaming market is expected to grow 5x-7x in the next 10 years, while I think it is possible I dont think it is possible to do that with todays prices, but I also think it isnt just a question of prices more is needed to be done new ways of playing (lets see what Wii and DS3 will do) new kind of games, more risk...)


Just a side note, each day I find harder to found games that last 20h.

IIRC Sony said that (some?) games could pass the 60$.

 

The true metric is individual value according to personal tastes. But it's fair to say that comparing activities a person can do for entertainment and get equal enjoyment out of, value can be determined by how much time you can spend enjoying an activity for your money. If you like going to the cinema and gaming, gaming is better value. If you love going to the cinema and don't mind gaming every now and then, the cost of games may be less value to you. Personal taste differs between people, but the cost and duration of the entertainment activities doesn't, so that's a decent method to judge by when comparing overall value rather than specific individual value.

The cost to develop a CD is pretty low, and to publish it is very low. The cost to produce a book is very low, but to publish it is expensive. Neither can compare to the multimillion dollar investments being needed to generate next-gen content. Neither will see a product need 50+ people for a year working on it.

Of course, but I thought I put in my personal opinion to contrast with yours

Art is mostly passive. You sit still and experience it, either looking at it or hearing it or reading it. Games are interactive, and the crux of the game is in it's gameplay, it's interactivity. Sure, there's some interactive arts produced (Myst!) and some artsy games, but by definition a game needs to be involved and partake of activity, which makes it not art.

And if they don't have the money, they do make such decisions. I've known plenty of people decide not to go out for an evening because they want to save the money to buy a product, such as a DVD. That's a choice on value on which they prefer. I don't know what the economy's like in your part of the world but over here, most people have a finite budget and would like to get the most from it (or get the most from their credit cards!)

In a thread about game pricing I think it's safe to assume value means economic value. And even factoring in those other crtieria, games come off no worse than any other entertainment media.

It works for me I haven't bought a duff console game yet because I research pretty much everything I buy. If me or my friends are unsure of a game, we'll buy it from GAME with a 10 day return policy so we get our money back if it sucks. I think it fair that if you can't afford to lose $50 on a bad game, find out the good games, rather than expect the games to be sold at $20 so when you buy a turkey it's not such a loss!

Generally that'd be the idea, but already it's possible for a new gamer to get a console for $100 and games for $20 or whatever. That's given us our current market, about 120 million console owners maybe. Probably more like 100 million. Unless consoles and games can get even cheaper than that, the current pricing represents the limit for people who find cost prohibitive. I don't see costs for gaming ever getting lower than that. Given that the value for the current hardware and software is very high, I doubt many are not getting into gaming because it costs too much, and I don't think the market can be grown by being cheaper. Perhaps some people can't afford $100 for consoles but would buy a $50 console, though TBH I expect anyone in that situation, unable to save $100 over a number of months, to have more important financial worries. The industry as a whole won't notice them being priced out of the market either, as they wouldn't be contributing much to software sales on such a tight budget.

IMO if cheaper games was to work, you'd need lots less titles all of AAA grade quality. Or just cut back on quality and keep the games cheap.

When you make a game you can't be sure how popular it'll be. If you spend $5 million on it, you need that $5 million back at least. You really need more to cover costs for the next title. If you sell a million copies, that's okay you only need get $5 back per sale. If you sell 200,000, you need $25 per copy sold. Now if selling games cheaper meant you could be sure of million+ sales, that's viable. But most games don't sell that well, even when they turn budget, so I don't see lower prices are really viable without something else giving way, like competition. If there's 1 million FPS players and 5 FPSes, some are going to get less sales. If there's only 2 FPSes, both good, they can expect a reasonable sell-through. Otherwise, if worst case predictions are for 200,000 sales say, and you only get $5 per sale because the price is low, you need to budget $1 million instead and cut back on the next-gen visuals and audio. As long as people want better games, they want more expensive games. Unless an alternative way to generate better content with less money comes along, or if the market increases in size considerably. The market size increasing doesn't to me look like it would happen with cheaper software. Seems t me for that to happen, we need different games that appeal to the currently non-gamers (if possibly).

 

Actually there is (quite a few) music videos that cost more than 1 M$, I didnt know so I got very suprissed that in many cases they cost a lot to produce.

Interesting conception.

They dont make such thing for those how they can afford, ie they dont do maths to know if they like more of A or B. (value and budget are very diferent)

We can only return if the case has not been opened.

Anyway I do have very few bad game, but the fact is that I find hard to to get nice games at 20$, maybe is just here

The problem is that, till today, consoles that cost 100$ are the the (near/) dead ones without new games and the only marketing there is say that they are very inferior things (compared to next gen). There is no conditions to have low cost market this way. Althought I think that PSOne had some relative sucess, at least with some games (IIRC HarryPotter (at the time it launched at a low price IIRC) for PSOne (after the launch of PS2) is one of the best seling games ever (over 9M copies)) and some PC games that "run everyhere" like sims. There is a market for this but not this way.

We can divide this between two things.

1: those who just dont have interest enought to pay so much for games, eg I like movies and DVDs and I do buy them, but if they cost 3x-4x times I wouldnt see or buy any DVD because I dont like enought of them to give such money. This is the case for many people with games they like it, but not enought to pay so much or having a lot, lot of work to find some good games at low price.

2: Those how cant afford, (actually this make me remember that ~3(?) years ago Nintendo had introduced (or planned to) N64 on China and some similar places I wonder how is that now), we saw in things like DVDs/CDs players that there is a big adoption even with those who have litle money to spend, there is no reason for those who buy 50-100$ DVDs didnt buy a 50-100$ console if they prefer it.

This make me remember something I saw about the TV series of Indiana Jones here the producer (?) said that ten years agoe the serie would be completely impossible to do because there as no PC so they couldnt do many of the thing or each episode would cost 10x more. There is a lot of discution of way to get cheaper games, (offline) processural work, comun/open librarys, diferent art stiles... they can find ways of doing AAA games with low budgets, specialy if they dont have to deal only with gamers that just care with games that push detail similar to 6M polys per guy on screen.

Anyway it is late here so I will reviewn this tomorow as I probably can explain this better (if it worth).