What is Digg?290 Comments
- Ymeg, on 10/04/2008, -6/+112Supply and demand?
People are willing to pay. - Frozenfuryblade, on 10/05/2008, -10/+82Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
- stk198323, on 10/04/2008, -23/+94Short answer: Because the company producing the game only cares about money.
Long answer: Because EVERY damn company involved only cares about money, especially the console manufacturer. - Lendon2020, on 10/04/2008, -10/+72I just wish game producers would stop focusing on beautiful graphics and make games with great stories and good contents. A realistic looking sky, water reflections, fog and weather effects is not what makes a great game.
- greevar, on 10/05/2008, -0/+44The average AAA title costs anywhere from $12 million to $15 million to produce. At $60 a pop, the game would have to sell 250,000 copies just to break even. That's not to say that the games industry isn't profitable. If it's truly a desirable game, it can sell much more than that (i.e. The Force Unleashed). There are a lot of professional issues that can drive up the cost of a game. Feature creep, can set schedules back which can increase man hours to produce the game. The producers may give too much or too little budget (time AND money) to development of the project, wasting resources on meeting unrealistic milestone schedules or taking time out of other projects to catch up on a task that fell behind. One of the most notorious issues is the marketing team over-promising on ship dates and features that the development team is forced to make good on despite the fact that the deadline is unrealistic. Let us not forget DRM. It takes man power to produce that piece of malware to protect the IP much to the publisher's delusion.
- Froderick, on 10/04/2008, -5/+45This is the primary purpose of region locking. To drive up the prices in certain regions. I've been subjected to it all my life.
- Georgy, on 10/05/2008, -2/+39you say it like its a bad thing, it is how the world economy runs, its also why you get paid
- inactive, on 10/05/2008, -0/+35Not according to the internets. Books, games, movies and music all grow on a magical tree.
- Awezing, on 10/05/2008, -2/+35I'm going to say they're so expensive... because they cost millions to produce. Just putting that out there though.
- inactive, on 10/05/2008, -7/+38It's called capitalism douchebag.
- Tiak, on 10/04/2008, -1/+29It's the only way Sony and Microsoft make money...
- inactive, on 10/05/2008, -4/+31You are being immature.
Making money is the purpose of every product out there. - Bobaliki, on 10/05/2008, -1/+28Quit your bitching, try living in Australia
- sfury, on 10/04/2008, -2/+27"...and you need to pay the console manufacturer – whether it's Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo – a per-copy royalty, which is around $10 (£6) on each unit manufactured, irrespective of whether they're sold or end up in landfill."
WTF?! - JohnFlux, on 10/05/2008, -0/+23So turn that into an advantage. Wait 6 months and buy it really cheap
- mrblaack, on 10/05/2008, -2/+24What sucks is that new games cost $60 and 6 months later they have no resale value.
- HaoTian, on 10/05/2008, -2/+23That alone doesn't make a great game... but it sure doesn't hurt! :)
- Pinkshisno, on 10/05/2008, -1/+20It's just like in the games themselves, where you waste a fortune on a really badass sword but then when you want to sell it back after getting a better one you get jack ***** for it.
- localzuk, on 10/05/2008, -0/+18There != Their
- GrantTheGr8, on 10/05/2008, -2/+20Runescape is not a great game...
- chaosblade77, on 10/05/2008, -1/+19Nintendo makes money on console sales as well. Sony and Microsoft take losses on their consoles for the first few years they are on the market. They basically try to subsidize the cost in order to have a technically superior product for a lower price.
It's not a stable business model at all, as we see from Sony this generation (lost 3 billion) and Microsoft last generation (lost 1 billion). Take losses per console, but end up with relatively low attach rates that aren't covering that loss, much less R&D costs for the console. - inactive, on 10/05/2008, -0/+16100 bucks for a brand spanking new game down here in australia and thats after its been out everywhere else for 3-6 months :(
- kinseyincanada, on 10/04/2008, -2/+18i thought game prices have gone down over the years, if you count inflation and all that.
- CarnivalOfDust, on 10/05/2008, -2/+17If the import is cheaper but you can't play it due to region locking, just pirate it until you can find it for the same price in your region. Don't like it, games companies? Then stop the region-coded *****.
- brieeyeball, on 10/05/2008, -0/+15$100 AUD is what, $70 USD? Not bad when you consider that Europeans are paying closer to $90 USD for the same games, with the same (or longer) release delays.
- dafin0, on 10/05/2008, -1/+16my guess is because a game now takes multiple years to make and sometimes a few hundred people who like getting paid.. then its all the marketing.
really its not that hard to work out why they "cost so much" - carpespasm, on 10/05/2008, -2/+16You also don't see DVDs and games selling in the same volumes. You can sell it for half as much when you sell twice as many. Everyone has a DVD player, how many people have a PS3 or are willing to build a top-end gaming rig when some new graphic intensive game comes out?
- Cubedude04, on 10/05/2008, -0/+14That's my policy with Steam not selling Stalker to Australians.
- adammharvey, on 10/05/2008, -5/+18because people have to get paid for there work and they should be paid for there work
- chaosblade77, on 10/04/2008, -0/+13That would be worth something if the amount of money going around was proportional to inflation. But most of the "new money" in the US is stuck in the government. My dollars are worth less than they were, but I don't have more of them.
- Tiak, on 10/04/2008, -0/+13Note: The £49.99 in the article/summary is equivalent to $88.78 a piece. Even if they're going down, that is still ridiculous.
- DeathRay2K, on 10/05/2008, -1/+14So do movies, but you don't buy a DVD for $50.
- Zipper114, on 10/05/2008, -0/+13I've worked in the industry as a game programmer for 10 years and those numbers are way off. First off, most AAA games take much, much more to produce than $12 to $15 million. Think more like $30 to $50 million. That's for AAA (e.g. Halo 3, GTA4, etc.) - lower tier games take much less. Secondly, 250,000 units at $60 a pop doesn't mean $12,000,000 makes it back to the developer. There's the stores(maybe 10 to 25% of the sale price gores right into their pocket), manufacturers, distributors, IP license fees, tech license fees and if you're developing for a console the console manufactures get their cut - all before the development studio sees one penny. On top of that AAA games often have very significant marketing and advertising budgets ($10's of millions in some cases).
The #1 reason games are expensive is because they take a long time (usually 18 months to 3+ years) and some games require teams of 100 to 200 people. These are technically skilled, professional people that get paid appropriately. Just as a ball park figure, maybe the average developer (across all disciplines) makes $60,000 per year. When you get paid $60k, it's actually costing your employer much more - they pay for health insurance, 401k, the building, the equipment, the heat and power, all your other benefits, etc. In reality, a person making $60k a year is probably costing the company $90k or more. Now do the simple math of team sizes of 100 people or more for maybe two or more years, tack on an advertising budget and you see why games are expensive and risky to make. - Slade605, on 10/05/2008, -0/+13And then you just use the really badass sword to behead the merchant and take all his gold.
- noots, on 10/05/2008, -0/+13indeed, i can't believe people don't realize this. You pay $27 for a blu-ray film (hancock on amazon), which lasts under 2 hours. Yet for not even twice the amount you can have a game that will entertain you for 20x longer.
It's a no brainer. You just cannot compare any other industry to the gaming industry. - inactive, on 10/05/2008, -3/+15Sigh, to produce an AAA game you are looking from $20m to $50m+.
Piracy probably doesn't help to much.
That's why. - Crimsoneer, on 10/05/2008, -0/+11Erm, the PS2 did the same thing, and that has proved to be the single best selling model ever.
- svensksvamp, on 10/05/2008, -3/+13A movie lasts for 2 hours, a video game lasts for about 10 hours. Hence the cost.
- ZeroFive1, on 10/05/2008, -0/+10Blizzard and vALVE are good examples of this.
Everyone complains about how "*****" starcraft 2 looks, but the truth is it will probably sell more than most games. - Narcowski, on 10/05/2008, -1/+10Nimphious, it isn't just America. The nation-state is dead to those with enough money (corporations); when that money loses value, every location they are feels it.
- GalacticRerun, on 10/05/2008, -0/+9I guess I don't really have a complaint. They've always seemed to cost around the same amount since SNES MegaDrive days, only now they're better quality. In fact, I paid £59.99 for SSF2:CE and £44.99 for SoR2 back in the day. I haven't spent that amount on a game since. Besides, if a movie costs around £10-£20, considering how many hours I get out of each of those I guess it seems pretty fair for a game to be double that.
But then I've never bought more than 5 full priced games per year. I've just never had the time to play so much. - evilish, on 10/05/2008, -1/+10Buying games in Australia is a frign joke.
A lot of games are delayed. Some are censored or banned because we do not have a 18+ rating. New games typically range between 80 and 120 dollars in normal stores (even if the AUD is high against the USD). Add to that DRM and you seriously have to wonder - why even bother buying?
Like today, bought the Gold Edition of Company of Heroes ($89.95). Brought it home. Spent 5 minutes waiting for it to "validate the media" on my brand spanking new machine. One of the CD Keys (on the booklet provided) came back invalid and I have had to download a 130mb update, so that I can get past the login screen to play one half of the game!
*****, I should have just upgraded my download quota and hit the pirate bay. Hell, I've bought and paid for the game and their treating me like a criminal already.
***** that! - Niz1, on 10/05/2008, -0/+9The price of the games doesn't help stop Piracy. Im not saying piracy is excusable but lets not beat around the bush it is the number 1 reason. If they lowered prices it might stop 20-30% of pirates?
- sjmulder, on 10/05/2008, -0/+9Or Europe. USD 90 for a 360 game.
- Akairenn, on 10/05/2008, -3/+12I'm failing to see what people complain about.
I recall paying $99 for Phantasy Star IV. A Genesis game. My roommate paid a similarly exorbitant price for one of the Final Fantasy games when it came out.
Adjusting for inflation and then thank your respective deity that games stabilized at the price they're currently at. And keep in mind - this was back in the original generation of the home gamer. We've grown up, we moved out of the basement, and we got jobs. We have the money to throw at game companies.
In return they dissapoint us nine times out of ten by spending all our disposable income on graphics and flash, instead of hiring even amateur game designers, but occasionally they do put something out worthy of the millions it took to create. - localzuk, on 10/05/2008, -0/+9Think about that from the companies' point of view - they spend 2 years developing a game, and then within 6 months their product will be worth hardly anything. Not many other industries have such a poor product lifetime.
- Lemonblood, on 10/05/2008, -1/+9And you haven't seen Australia. AUD $119 around $92 USD for a new release game.
- ZombieSociety, on 10/05/2008, -1/+810 hours is a short-ass game.
- neko6, on 10/05/2008, -0/+7@anononon - How is the world economy great right now?
1. You're alive and pretty certain to live tomorrow as well.
2. You've eaten something you like today and am pretty certain to eat something you like tomorrow as well.
3. You own a computer and have a roof above your head.
Just because people can now afford 5% or 10% less than they could yesterday doesn't mean the system is broken, its still a hundred times more than they had 1000 years ago. - IvesMozart, on 10/05/2008, -0/+7Come to Australia to see what a really expensive game means. Not to mention to censorship and some games that takes ages to release. Rock Band 1 will be released in some months. Cheers mates
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