What is Digg?47 Comments
- Zukunft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23Actually, there are some DS games at $20, there are some DS games at $30, and there are some DS games at $35.
- artemus, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23You obviously missed the point behind his comments, so let me quote you from the article:
"At present, the models used by publishers and retailers alike are not suited to releasing games at price points other than the top-end RRPs for console software - with many publisher shying away from lower-priced releases for fear that retailers and consumers will treat them as being lower quality budget software.
However, Iwata believes that the discounting of full-price software which has become prevalent in the industry is even more damaging than this effect, and is damaging the sales of new software.
"If the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting," he explained, "which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software."
But I guess it's silly that Nintendo wants to actually turn a profit on their software. - Wawert, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17That's another way of looking at it; as in sales are damaged by an almost guaranteed cycle of lower prices. I view it as an excuse to keep prices up. In any almost any case, the majority of a game's copies sold are in the first few months. For example, Halo 2 and the new Final Fantasy both moved over a million copies first day. Frankly, its not really affecting total product sold and probably helps old games get a "second wind" one might say to the lowering of game prices on a regular basis.
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15It does make sense. I'd own Oblivion (on the PC) right now if I didn't know for a fact that it'll be under $40 in a month or so.
I, and pretty much every older gamer on the planet, have a serious backlog of games to play.. more gaming than I have time. I can afford to wait for the inevitable price drop. - drunkjack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7He's right, though. I haven't bought a full priced PS2 game, ever. I buy discounted marketing failures(Mark Of Kri, Rise of The Kasai) and Greatest Hits. I've never spent more than $20 on a PS2 game. But then, I only own 10 games or so.(and two of those are VF4 and VF4Evo)
I have, however, spent $35 on DS games.
And Nintendo has already introduced the idea of two tier pricing, Brain Age, and Big Brain Academy and I think the Sudoko Gridmaster game are all $20 list. But New Super Mario Bros was $35. If they take that tact, lower priced games that are more universal and less graphics and design intensive to the Wii they could really hit another sweet spot.
Mom and Dad won't spend $50 for a game they MIGHT want to play with Jr. But they'd probably $25 on a game they might want to play with Jr.
I bet if Wii Sports with it's simple graphics but obvious broader appeal isn't a pack in, it's sold at a lower price point than Zelda:Twilight Princess, half or less. - 5thfreedom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Turning a profit is fine and expected. But I think software companies and the movie industry are missing the big picture.
People wait for that $50 game or $30 DVD to be in the bargain bin because they think the cost is too high. So they wait 6 months until the game is $20 or the DVD is $10 and then they buy it because they think they are getting their moneys worth. If Nintendo set a price point of $50 per game and the games never went down in price, people would still play the games, but they would be buying them used or renting/borrowing them instead.
Why not sell the games and movies for less to begin with, and then hold firm to that price? If Wii games debuted at a price point of $35 dollars each, more people would be inclined to purchase the games when they are released. With such a competitive price point to begin with, how could anybody complain if the price still hadn't gone down after 6 months or a year? Eventually, consumers would get used to this model and embrace it, buying games when they wanted them, rather than waiting for a price drop.
I know I would own a hell of a lot more DVD movies if they were $15 on the day they were released. - crazyc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"If the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting," he explained, "which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software."
I call bollocks! This type of pricing is particularly effective for new products, since the customers that are in need of the software the most, will buy it instantly at a higher price, than those who are not so much in need.
It is the same pricing strategy used by Sony for their PlayStation releases in the past. The ones who will pay the most for their PlayStation receives it first - it is like a form of mass auction.
Consumers know that hardware prices are always dropping, and yet they keep on buying hardware.
If you applied fixed pricing to the industry, then the prices would be considered too cheap for the first few months, and too expensive after a year - price reductions, on a product which lose value over time, just makes sense. - nuvem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What's silly is Iwata's dream world. Like anything else, games lose value over time; having Halo 3 on release day > having Halo 3 after everyone has played it and it's on the platinum hits list.
Retailers *must* discount products, they have to. From the day they purchase a stock of a game, every minute costs them money till they get it out of the store. Every game that doesn't sell is taking up valuble space that could be used by games that do sell. Eventually it gets to the point where you don't mind taking a cut in profit if it means freeing up space for new product with a higher margin.
If you speak to actual game developers, a great majority of them will tell you that games usually sell most of their copies in the first couple months; as soon as sales drop, retailers are eager to reduce their display space and make room for the next big seller.
I'm all for pricing games based on their quality/development costs/etc., but you can't sit in a little developer bubble and ignore the entire industry that sells your product. - SpaceDreamer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6here, DS games are £30, except Brain Training which is £20 , but I only noticed it after I bought it !
- sam10685, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"If the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting," he explained, "which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software."
i do that... - Burn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4They are in Australia.
- akashra, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Then if he's going to whine about software prices being reduced and giving that impression, they should fix their danm pricing to start with. AUD70 for a GBA game and AUD100 for a GCN game is absolultely ridiculous.
If they want to complain about game prices, they should look at home first before placing the blame on others. - chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8yeah but there are some PS2 game for $5 and some for $30. I want to see if Nintendo stick to there guns with Wii pricing.
- gameboyhippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think Iwata's mostly right. There are times I'll shell out $50 for a game that I've been dying to play (Rouge Squadron III, Pikmin 2, Sonic Heroes, etc...) but most of the time I'll wait for games to drop to $20. It does annoy me when I buy a game like Sonic Heroes and find out that it is $20 just a few months later. That's why I haven't bought Shadow or Sonic Riders yet.
- jferraro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The idea that consumers will wait for prices to drop because they expect they will makes sense, but that's not exactly how it works at least in my oppinion. I may not buy a game new because I don't think it is worth the 50 or 60 dollar price tag, but if it drops down to 40 I may decided that is the value I would pay. It's all about perception of value. People will pay for what they think something is worth.
- Flooq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That's not Iwata's point though. He's not complaining about retailers dropping the price of his games, he's saying that if that's happening it's because games are over-priced at launch.
Maybe if you actually read the articles you'd see why people aren't jumping down his throat over this and why Sony executives have been the target for so many jokes recently. - Arkz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I get all my games from Play.com and while all other X-360 games cost £39.99 that rockstar games tenis game costs £24.99, which is good cause its not exactly as big as say Oblivion... i think games like DOA should be £24.99 too though
- Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I went ahead and bought Smash Brothers Melee a few weeks after it came out because I knew it wouldn't drop in price for several years. Hell, it still goes for $25-35 in retail. But a good point to consider is the quality of the games being marked down rapidly... you never find Paper Mario, Half Life 2 or Resident Evil 4 in the $10 bargain bin because the games kick ass and people keep buying them since they are "instant classics".
- dolson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Same here. It's also part of the reason I still don't have that Mario Baseball game that came out years ago. It's still top dollar for that...
- nlatimer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If Nintendo wants to have a different business model, and they want to be the bargain console, that is thier perogative. However most technology companies practice a "cream on top" business model, getting the people who will pay the most first, and keep going down.
- mrgreen4242, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I don't think this would stop them from having a "value line" of rereleases. They've done that with most systems, taking the most popular games and reboxing them at a lower price, usually $19.99. It's technically a new product, with a new SKU and MSRP. They've made their money back, and likely whatever their profits goal was as well, now they are trying to sell as many "extra" units as possible.
To be honest, I don't see many console games get discounted to a lower price in 6-9 months, unless they really suck and just aren't selling. It seems to take a good year for a game to drop $10 in price, and then another year for an eventual reduction to $20 (usually as a reboxed "platinum line" game or something like that).
And all that usually does is drive the used price down, which is where budget conscience gamers are shopping anyways. - SniperSlap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1According to this, all of Nintendo's retro titles should be free.
- Nobi-Wan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is coming from the same guy who releases a new version of the Game Boy/DS every few months?
I've learned from Nintendo's little "cycle" that Iwata says is unhealthy, and it paid off for me because I just picked up the DS Lite. I paid less for a better version of a handheld that was released fairly quickly after the first version was released. - Mist0r_Wiggles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1or i can just go on eBay.
- mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Hmm. On one hand, I see where he's coming from; I play computer games, where it's even worse (because not only does the cost go down, but patches come out and computers become more able to run them.) If I don't care about having the game immediately, I'll wait for it to cheapen up. However, I have gotten games cheap that I just wouldn't have bought otherwise. Sometimes, this gets me involved in the series and I'll end up getting later games when they first come out. So, it's definitely a win for those games which I would have ignored otherwise.
I think it would be a losing bet for game companies to keep selling games at the current rates without lowering the prices over time. It would reduce overall sales substantially, because hardly anyone would buy games they didn't know they'd like, so people would become involved in fewer genre and franchises. Maybe it'd work differently with renting; it would allow people to try things cheaply. Since it doesn't exist in the computer world, I can't say. However, if they're talking about possibly starting at more reasonable prices and leaving them there, it could possibly work. - Teiman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I like most commercial games, like Battlefield 1942, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 (yea, I am the guy that like it), Balduras Gate 2, Command Conquers Generales, Fort Apocalipse, Spyndizzy and M.U.L.E.
But theres also good free games. FPS like Tremulous, Nexuiz, simple games like BZflag, strategy ones like Battle for Wesnoth. etc. Theres, actually, lotsa gaming stuff for free & freedom.
This is a reply to the guy that say theres is not good free games. - MatttK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hmm... discounting games after release is bad? So THAT'S why Nintendo sells NES and SNES games emulated on GBA cartridges for $49.99 (CAD). :/
- Burgerman851, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FTA: "'If the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting,' [Iwata] explained, 'which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software.'"
Has he been watching me? - mrpackrat42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hey, Iwata, welcome to this wonderful system we have over here. It's called a market economy, where we let the marketplace determine the price point.
- ryllharu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5His point is that when popular titles are sold to an extent where the prices are dropped later Sony's "Greatest Hits" for example, it will get to a point where the consumers will begin to figure that out and a large number of people will wait. So, when the next Grand Theft Auto comes out, the consumer mass will figure "I know I can get it for $50 now, or wait 6 months and get it for $20." Then, the game doesn't sell, and Sony has no reason to want to discount since they never got the million sales of the game they use to switch it into the Greatest Hits catalog. That means no price drop, and those still waiting to for that drop will never buy it.
Granted, the ones that want it the most won't wait and will gladly spend the extra 30 bucks. But at the same time, I know I've waited for some games to get cheap before I buy them. I do not believe it will ever get the to point that Iwata thinks where it stifles the whole industry to a standstill, but his point is valid.
Nintendo has been trying to revitalize the slowly hemorrhaging game industry, and anything that stifles that revitalization is something Nintendo wants to make an issue of. - millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"If the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting," he explained, "which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software."
Um, there are tons of people who have already "learned the cycle" since about 1991 and wait for games to drop in price, and there are those who want the game the day it comes out and pay full retail. This has been going on for years. Damaging the industry? Videogames are still a multi-billion dollar industry, apperently overshadowing the movie industry now. - a_trotskyite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Marketing 101 - do not base price on cost. Cost is not the customer's problem. sell the product at what the customer is willing to pay, then set the development, production and marketing budgets accordingly.
- Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I understand his point... but I like paying less ;o;
- mrgreen4242, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1They could and they don't. See the craziness surround the PS3 over the 4 or 5 months for references.
- wthnow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I just hope at some point there is a way to buy all the movies that came out from 1975-Now and All the games that came out from 1983-Now IE Chowder Splinter Cell Burnout Myst Deus EX Thexder Unreal Tournament Monuments of Mars. It annoys me that as time goes on it gets harder to find these things.
- filovirus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If console manufacturers could feasibly prevent games from being resold on the secondary market, they would do so. Secondary markets for CDs and games is a good alternative for saving money.
- JCPRuckus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@drunkjack
You seem to be the only person who got what he was saying. He's not saying 'Keep charging $60 no matter how long the game is out', he's saying, 'If your development costs only justify a $40 price point, then sell it at that. Don't start off selling it for $60 and then lower the price to compensate for the fact that few people will buy it at that price.' I see the logic, especially since that would mean that many new Wii games would be coming out for a much lower price point than 360 or PS3 games. However, since I'm a big fan of $20 games, I'm not sure I like the idea. I guess it depends how much over $20 they're going to be charging. - SpaceDreamer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think he is right, the price of a game should reflect its quality, not just its age. Otherwise all the uninformed consumers will keep thinking that all games are as good as each other, and they will keep buying any crap as long as it's "new"
- domicius, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Media consumption, in general, is marked by an increased discounting of items as sales volumes decrease. It might just be the fact that once a game is released companies stop marketing them as intensely, and as a result sales volumes decrease.
The other side of the equation is the availability of substitute products; if few titles were published for a particular machine/game category, prices should stay higher because consumers don't really have an alternative (interestingly, the MMRPG of the year seems to be in that category).
I think that Mr. Iwata should advocate pioneering a new pricing model, rather than bemoaning one that is the result of many years consumer/retailer interaction.
And, for the record, I rarely pay more than £10 for games on the GBA. Since I get about 3 hours fun from most, and I don't know beforehand which ones I'd like, I'm not going to risk £30 on a full price turkey (you only have to do that twice to be burnt).
On the other hand, on the PC I'm much likelier to buy a budget-label/priced game (i.e. on rerelease) because I can try the demo and have an informed opinion. - Flooq, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1No GPL games which I've played match up to the standards of high budget proprietary games though. The best games available under the GPL in my opinion are Id Software's core but they don't release the engine code until it's commercial value has deprecated. The exclusivity of it is too important to their business model for a start.
- Jellybob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I'd love to, but since we're talking about games here it's not really practical - I don't know of any really good GPLed games.
Probably due to the skill set associated with people developing under the GPL you can get lots of game engine demos, but commercial grade games with professionally designed graphics, sound, and most importantly game play, aren't anywhere to be seen. - chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -14/+12I'll bookmark this and see how the Wii does with prices. Will each game be a different price... I doubt it.
they don't do it for the DS now so... - smurfx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Hmm, i'm sure if it was somebody at sony that made those comments you would now have tons of reports of sony not planning to ever cut prices of their games and plenty of sony hating on digg as usual.
- KidVicious, on 10/12/2007, -13/+8This is interesting, considering in my experience Nintendo seems to drop their prices like every 3 months. I've never seen more of this behavior with any company other than Nintendo, with the exception of maybe Apple.
"Hey guys, I just bought a Gamecube!"
"Oh, the new platinum Super Mario Sunshine Bundle?"
"No, I didn't know about that"
"Oh yeah it just came out."
"Hey dude, I finally bought a GBA"
"SP?"
"Wha..."
"The one that's a thousand times better with a lit screen and rechargeable battery that just came out for the same price as the old one?"
"*****.... no." - Sophistifunk, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1GBA games aren't AU$70 anywhere, more like $45... DS games are $60-75 depending on how good they are and how long they've been around.
- lefthandedlinux, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1hey! how about this? dont buy any software and just use GNU/GPLed software for FREE!
- Wawert, on 10/12/2007, -32/+22In other words, screw the consumer. Bargain sales shouldn't exist! Hell, this probably explains the Mario Party game prices.
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