XB360 suicide software prices

[Shifty Geezer]

I was thinking of checking out the local Game store to see if there's any XB360 demo hardware in the Uk. The launch is a month off and they ought to be showing it here as they are US and Japan. Thought Id visit Game.co.uk to see if there's any news. There wasn't, but I did see the XB360's software prices - £45-50. £50 was for FCK and Prey, not what I thought list-topping titles. Compare that with the average current gen price of about £33-34 (nice to see Game are finally trying to compete with Play and the like) and that's a huge difference. It looks to me like those software prices are going to be too much for many people. Software tie ratio, and game profitability for MS, is surely going to take a hit.

 

[Diesel2]

That's getting a bit rich. That would be the equivalent of approx $110 AUD. If Sony follows suit, I think I'll be renting and Ebaying quite a lot next generation.

 

[dave_m123]

If you can try Play.com. 360 games are selling for £40 there. Still expensive I know but less than Game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I always buy from Play, any optical disk format. XB360 games are still £10 more there too. Assuming those extra prices are going to the devs and the license fees aren't going up, MS aren't getting any more money per game than they do for XB. Which means if less games sell (or are printed in repsonse to lower sales to be accurate) MS won't be taking as much game money from the first 20 million XB360 users as they do currently. That's ging to make becoming profitable even harder. I guess they're pinning all their hopes on either much much larger userbase or cuts cheap downloadable content? Maybe the idea is people buy less games but play them more and increase game life with paid-for addons?

Or the prices are just high to begin with as the user base isn't there to cover dev costs, and they know early adopters are willing to pay. What were prices like this gen? Did they start higher and come down to the £40 RRP mark?

 

[London Geezer]

This gen, new games either released at £39.99 or £36.99. Some exceptions launched at lower prices. Still a lot of money nevertheless.

 

[lefizz]

Actually thats not true. A lot of xbox titles launched at £45 on the hi street, a fiver more than the PS2 price. This was changed later now. Considering that some N64 games were in the £60-70 price bracket these prices for the content you get might not be so bad. Also by the time the 360 is a mass market product and competeing against the PS3 i can see price droping to £35-40 as has happned in the gneration. The thing is for developers such as bizarre creations etc. developing a next gen title might get you loads of press but when there is an installed user base of zero they probably have to have higher prices to start with to try and re-coup the development cost.

 

[mrdarko]

what i would like to know is,what do sony and microsoft get in royalty payments per game?

for example,pro evo 5 costs £40 on both consoles but only £30 on pc.

is the £10 difference the royalty fee?

on top of this difference the pc version sells for £17.99 on play versus £30 on consoles!

now if it turns out next gen games are going up by ~£10 how do sony/ms expect to people
to keep up with these rises?

 

[lefizz]

This will be a laucnh thing only for sure. MS are in a position where they see that they have no gen gen direct competition. That is why the console id quite expensive and the games are quite expensive. When the thing starts rapping production and the cost of both games and hardware fall so will the price tag, maybe even before the ps3 launches.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

what i would like to know is,what do sony and microsoft get in royalty payments per game?

for example,pro evo 5 costs £40 on both consoles but only £30 on pc.

is the £10 difference the royalty fee?

Sony and MS (and Nintendo if they ever get 3rd party support ) get paid something like $5-10 per game disc printed. If a company prints 1,000,000 discs, they pay $5-10 million in fees even if they only sell 10,000 copies. That's where the risk comes with publishing, measuring demand, and in part why devs are dependant on publishers to front up the money to cover these costs. I think, from what's been said on this forum before, in store prices are up to a 100% markup on official game prices. Hence a £40 game costs the store £20.

 

[Phil]

Woah, not sure how that translates into the prices that I can expect overhere, but I can assure you that I am not willing to pay more for games that I already am (that being CHF 89 to CHF 99). If Microsoft indeed wants to sell them for more, that would roughly translate to over a hundred swiss francs over here per game. That's how much import games go for. No fricking way. And I don't consider myself a casual gamer.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Check this canadian site and see how much the games cost there (27-33£). I have a preorder on the X360 bundle there, which has following stuff included.

-Xbox 360 Premium System
-Wireless Controller
-Combination High-Definition Component and Standard A/V Cable
-20GB Hard Drive
-Ethernet Cable
-Headset
-Bonus Media Remote
-Xbox Live Silver
-Xbox Live Gold 30-Day Trial
-Extra Wireless Controller
-play & Charge Kit (for extra controller)
-Rechargeable Battery Pack (for included controller)

and it goes for 243£, not too bad





http://www.dvdboxoffice.com/

 

[lefizz]

Interesting but since the games will be regionally encoded and live is so crucial to the 360 dont you think that really that will be a pain. Even when mod chips come out you then like now wont be able to play on live. Plus you will need a 240/110 250watt tansformer.

All in all doesnt seem very attractive to me, ok it a good price but at what cost?

 

[mrdarko]

Sony and MS (and Nintendo if they ever get 3rd party support ) get paid something like $5-10 per game disc printed. If a company prints 1,000,000 discs, they pay $5-10 million in fees even if they only sell 10,000 copies. That's where the risk comes with publishing, measuring demand, and in part why devs are dependant on publishers to front up the money to cover these costs. I think, from what's been said on this forum before, in store prices are up to a 100% markup on official game prices. Hence a £40 game costs the store £20.

looking on the bright side an 100% mark-up isn't as bad as my other hobby (hi-fi)

accessorys can command upto a 1000% mark-up

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Watch batteries. Sold over the counter for about $5. Bought by the store of the middle-man for £1. Bought from the battery company for 20p. Cost to produce each battery = pennies.

 

[Powderkeg]

Check 1st party game prices. I don't know about the UK, but in the US, 1st party games are still the same price as last-gen, but all 3rd party games ahve increased by $10 US.

And it's not going to be any different for the PS3 and Revolution. Most 3rd party publishers have switched to a permanent price increase of about 20% for next-generation games on all platforms.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Interesting but since the games will be regionally encoded and live is so crucial to the 360 dont you think that really that will be a pain. Even when mod chips come out you then like now wont be able to play on live. Plus you will need a 240/110 250watt tansformer.

All in all doesnt seem very attractive to me, ok it a good price but at what cost?

Well I will buy games from Canada too, offcourse it's not so easy to get rid of them, but I will only buy games that I want hold on to. I don't see what's the problem with Live is?, it's not locked to certain regions if that's what you mean, Europeans can play against americans, and I can play against finnish guys if I want to, atleast on most games. Are you sure you need transformer? it has extrernal powersource like PStwo and PStwo's brick can take 110-240volts, all I had to do, was to get a new cable which costs about 1$. Now I'm not sure about X360's brick, but at the worst case I may have to ditch about 50e for transformer, or for european X360 brick which should work in all X360's

I can clearly understand that importing is not appealing to everyone, but I like the cheaper price (even after taxes) and the fact that many games comes out earlier in North-America. Both my Xbox and PS2 are US-model and I have been pretty happy with them.

edit: fixed about 1000 typos

 

[pc999]

If the prices will raise that may be bad for a lot of gamers, I am sure they will lost costumers that way, not get new ones.

 

[MrWibble]

Watch batteries. Sold over the counter for about $5. Bought by the store of the middle-man for £1. Bought from the battery company for 20p. Cost to produce each battery = pennies.

I had to buy a watch battery at the weekend and it only cost 99p...

But er... yeah, what you said.

 

[Powderkeg]

If the prices will raise that may be bad for a lot of gamers, I am sure they will lost costumers that way, not get new ones.

Maybe at first, but the new price structure will be something people eventually accept just like higher gas prices or $7 movie tickets.

 

[Branduil]

Maybe at first, but the new price structure will be something people eventually accept just like higher gas prices or $7 movie tickets.

I'll just never buy new games. I think part of the reason used games are so popular now is because even now they're overcharging for most games.