Prices of next-gen games

Johnmcl7

donnajunkie wrote: »

back in the speccy/c64 days i remember there were games for £1.99 and the so called good games were around a tenner. did the sudden jump in prices start with the nes and the master system? i didnt bother with those systems so dont know myself.

The early consoles used cartridges which were much more expensive than the tapes used by the Spectrum/C64 which immediately put the price up considerably. There were actually cartridge based C64 games which were much more expensive than even the pricier tape games due to the cost of the cartridge with the benefit being instant loading times and I think fancier games.

I can't remember how much NES games cost but SNES games were usually around £39.99 for standard games, SNES FX games were £49.00 and Streetfighter 2 or Turbo came out at £64.99. Prices on release at the N64 went higher again with Turok 1 I think being released with a £74.99 price tag. The N64 struggled on price as the Playstation used CD's which were far cheaper and much higher capacity.

I'm trying to remember on the 360 launch if some of the games were £50, I thought they were but it seems they were £40. It's not unusual for launch games to be pricier so I wouldn't be surprised if standard game prices drop particularly if they're not getting the sales they expect although it could always work the other way round if demand stays high.

Going back to the Spectrum/C64 days, I did enjoy going down to the shop each week, choosing a game based on the screenshots and text on the back and then next week doing the same again. The games were only a couple of pounds and many of them were rubbish but there were the few gems which we'd spend hours with.

I've been enjoying PC gaming for the same reason, there's so many deals and sales on Steam in particular that there's loads of games I buy for a few pounds each again most of which turn out to be not great but then you have the absolute gems that I've sunk hours into - Terraria and Super Hexagon come to mind here. As the games are that much smaller, the developers can be much more adventurous whereas with the big releases they're having to be safer and take less risks because the huge development time and cost means unless the game sells well it's the end of the developer.

John

AlecEiffel

I think up to £50 is ok (obviously I'd rather it was less) if you pick your games right. Fallout 3 gave me well over a hundred hours of play for £40, considering a trip to the flicks is nearly a tenner for 2 hours or so it's not bad. Multiplayer games can be good value until you get sucked into the new maps for tenner cycle.

I generally buy games after they've been out a while as I don't have that much time to play and am usually playing something I bought a while back. This past gen I bought only a few games at launch (Fallout 3, Portal 2, The Last Of Us to name a few) and got some others like RDR+RDR Undead Nightmare later (bargain for £15!).

Slayerx

Lumstorm wrote: »

One of my favorite retailers in Canada sells Ps4 games for £35 add postage and packing and that should be around £40 a game. www.videogamesplus.ca

I would highly recommend VG+ they have always been excellent.

gonzo127

personally i wouldnt expect a drop in prices any time soon, i also expect if sony and microsoft have their heads screwed on which i think they do in most cases you will start to see a two teired pricing structure (once the full infastructure is in place for the next gens)

in my mind you will get it where a disk based new release will be £50-60 but a download option (with no resale ability - like steam) will be £35-50, doing this will encourage people to buy 'new' with a download and will start to kill of the second hand sales stands in game etc, it will eventually get to a critical mass where there is not enough second hand sales to be able to keep the stores like game open, these will start to close, meaning people will have to travel further to get their second hand games, so some o fhtem will convert to download and so it continues until the second hand market pretty much dies, score one for Microsoft and Sony, no more middle man for sales so they can then rise the price on downloads and make more profit

donnajunkie

when some games have been out a while and they are widely available second hand i cant see how they can avoid reducing the prices of them. i cant see a price drop for a console happening before next xmas at the earliest.

donnajunkie

BobbyJohnson wrote: »

I think something else which might justify these higher prices is that in most cases, you get much more for your money these days with multiplayer.

this is a problem with gaming now, its assumed that people are mostly just interested in the multiplayer.

donnajunkie

BobbyJohnson wrote: »

I think if anything the publishers are testing to see what people are willing to pay for next gen games. It's much easier to test higher prices and then drop them if it doesn't work compared to the other way round.

wages go up but surely they should be coming up with cheaper more efficient methods of producing games as technology advances.

donnajunkie

BobbyJohnson wrote: »

I don't think it's the case that they assume people are more interested, I think it's more that it's easier to prolong peoples game time and monetize multiplayer.

My favourite game last gen was Skyrim, so hopefully developers keep pushing them out.

yeah, it can prolong peoples game time. however it doesnt justify a massive price as was mentioned when you consider a large percentage couldnt care less whether there was a multiplayer option or not. multiplayer should always be seen as a bonus rather than the main reason to play. if a game has a good campaign you can keep going back to it. the multiplayer only lasts as long as there are alot of people playing it.

Lumstorm

BobbyJohnson wrote: »

Hopefully with next gen we see this stop and prices becoming equal, or even cheaper due to the lack of printing and physical distribution costs.

Next gen? Do we really want to wait for the PS5 for this to happen. It annoys me when people talk of next gen. The PS4 and XBone are not next gen anymore, they are present gen systems.

techno12

I picked up Assassins Creed 4 today from GAME. £22.49 for the PS3 version, but it comes with a code inside to upgrade to the PS4 version for another £9.99

Pretty pleased with that, and a clever way to get you to upgrade ie "it's only a tenner more for next-gen goodness. Give me some of that". Of course, it relies on the last-gen versions to be sold cheap. The guy in GAME didn't know about the upgrade, but was saying they were flying off the shelves since they halved the price.

I'll be looking out for similar offers on other cross-platform titles