What is the right price for games?

[Silent_Buddha]

I don't see how you could set a global price on anything.

EU is going to be higher than the US no matter what because of government mandated fee's that are tacked on directly or indirectly. VAT is higher than Sales Tax in the US. And VAT is added to the price displayed while Sales Tax isn't. The EU has a mandated minimum guarantee term which doesn't exist in the US. How will that be paid for? Why the consumer will have to pay unless the manufacturer wishes to pay people to use their product.

Then you get situtions like Brazil with high import tax to protect the local businesses. Someplace like Australia where it's more expensive to ship items. Etc...

And I still don't see why people insist on comparing a movie (generally 1.5-2 hours of entertainment) to a game which generally offers multiples of that. Dragon Age Origins on my first playthrough took 80 hours. At movie prices (say 10 USD) I should have been charged 400 USD for the game. Or heck, at BluRay prices, they should have charged me 800-1000 USD for those 80 hours of entertainment.

At the end of the day, all companies will charge the lowest amount they can to maintain sales, make a profit, and avoid firing people. Sometimes some of that has to be sacrificed so the entire company doesn't go out of business and everyone loses their jobs... Smarter companies know that business is cyclical and there will be downtimes and they will try to have high enough margins that they can build a large cash reserve. In other words companies people think are exploiting consumers are the companies most likely to be around 20 years from now (Intel for example).

Regards,
SB

 

[TheD]

Someplace like Australia where it's more expensive to ship items.

BS!

Shipping is cheap as chips eg. I had 5KG of stuff shipped from The Netherlands to Australia express for 65Euro, if that had been games that would be $2.1 AUD per a game!

I can buy games from the UK for half the price of local.. Inc shipping!

And then you have Steam and the like which costs 100% the same or less to "ship" the game (yet some games cost 2x as much as the US steam store).

 

[fearsomepirate]

True, but as a pub or a dev, you have to sell slightly more than 3 titles instead of 2 to produce the same revenue, so now you need a third consumer to step in and buy a title.

Obviously these aren't fixed numbers. The question is whether sales would increase enough to justify a given price drop. There would likely have to be a cut in development budget as well.

 

[dobwal]

Obviously these aren't fixed numbers. The question is whether sales would increase enough to justify a given price drop. There would likely have to be a cut in development budget as well.

How can you expect a sales increase from any given title with a price drop while simultaneously cutting the development budget, which could have a negative impact on sales, on that title?

Nevertheless, regardless of where you set the price for a new title, the second hand market will adjust and price the used versions of that title accordingly.

Furthermore, the Wii has cheaper development and retail price on its titles. But outside a few titles, I haven't seen data that shows that the cheaper price point and development costs have allowed pubs and developer to on average produce more revenue versus your average PS3/360 title.