Will you pay the extra?

[Trebor901]

With Activision pushing prices for their latest games up to £54.99 rrp and for a special edition £120, are you prepared to pay up to £15 more for your console / pc games?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

When the quality is good and the content even better i don't mind about prices at all. It are hard times for games developers and publishers while development costs for games are rising.

Not really a weird decision to raise the bar a little with prices

 

[Trebor901]

But with things like Modern Warfare 2 which is the first game they're trying this on, they would have made a lot of money with it at normal price because it will sell like hot cakes.

You say its hard times for game developers but the reason for that is that its hard times for everyone so some people cant even afford the normal £34.99 or £29.99 so how are they going to afford £50 or £45 for a game.

Although as you say if the game is guarenteed to be very good like Modern Warfare then i dont mind paying the extra.

 

[Christian Lyngbye]

If we get a demo for COD 6/MW2 I probably won't be able to resist. I don't even know any other games made by Activision/Blizzard I would buy.
I just hope they've made the AI better and more realistic in stead of just AI that keeps respawning until you've passed a certain point.

 

[Steven Palmer]

Raising retail prices to recoup revenue spent in development is a poor business model, they'll end up alienating the customer and sell less, which will exacerbate the problem. Costs have to be cut at the source end, prices have to be kept low to encourage people to buy it in large quantities, and the developers need to accommodate their communities more by making their games modder friendly to extend the products life cycle (e.g how many people will now buy a copy of rFactor so they can try the new endurance mod?)

 

[Kevin Watts]

IIRC the prices have risen with each new generation of consoles. Like Bram says though if the quality and content is there then I will pay for it especially when you consider the development times of games relevant to this site - Gran Turismo 5 and Forza 3. People want bigger and better visuals and so the development time increases. The knock on effect here in the UK is probably an extra £3-£4 on the shop price. The RRP for Modern Warfare 2 is £54.99 though it can be found at most retailers for between £42 and £44.

I'm a big Call of Duty fan, played them since the first PC title and spent countless hours on the 360 and PS3 playing CoD4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: World at War. I think the price hike for this title is a bit of a shameless cash in becasue they know its going to sell massively because the first title was such a huge hit with the fans. Even as a big fan of the series I have spoken to friends who play the game and we all seem to agree that Modern Warfare 2 may well be a bit of a let down and feel like more or the same or just an expansion pack. Graphically I don't think its taken a large leap like Forza 3 has taken over Forza 2 for example and Infinity Ward would be crazy to meddle with the online game modes as they work so well already which is why its still very popular online 2 years on.

I think Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick is treading a dangerous path with his comments recently which include wanting to see even higher prices for games, perhaps as much as $70. A lot of gamers are very angry and have said they may not buy Modern Warfare 2 or perhaps buy it pre-owned and deny Activision a sale. Of course a lot of those calling for a boycott (it seems every day someone is calling for a boycott of this or that) are kids who will go ahead and buy it anyway. I'm undecided, on one hand I want to support Infinity Ward for giving me so much gaming pleasure with CoD4 yet on the other I feel Activision is just being greedy in respect to this particular title as it feels like a cash-in.

 

[Mark A Warmington]

For me it will depend on the title, the hype, the marketing, the quality and my ultimate desire to own the game. I still may buy the games but I will definitely buy less.

 

[Jamie R]

I don't even pay £40 for a game. Untill it is worth £20 pre-owned I won't get it, I really don't see how people can think they are worth much more than this. 4 full price games is the price of a new xbox 360 arcade!

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Do you have any clue how much the development of a game costs Jamie?

Also developers don't make much profit on a game: biggest part is going to the publisher and they happen to feel a big pain with the current economic crisis.

Personally i find games still pretty cheap. Those that complain that a single game is too expensive i have the following question:

"How come you wear $150 dollar sneakers and a $100 jeans, that last like 3 months and are developed in China for $5 each" <---- talking about profit

A good game you play for months, and some even for years. Hours and hours a week. So a calculation on the amount of fun time compared to the buy price is not even an issue imo

 

[Ben Shears]

As far as I can remember game prices have always gone up and down.

I can't remember the prices on Amiga, mum and dad used to buy them. I remember most games on PS1 were about £40-45, which with inflation was relatively more back then obviously. Then Driver (great game) came out at £30 and it was a big drop and for a while other companies dropped their prices too.

In the end everyone will make their own decision, I can't see it being a big effect on something as big MW2. I will probably pay more for games like that and Forza 3 because I know the multiplayer will give me really good value in the end.

 

[Mark Birney]

Many of those games are crap anyway, especially Activision's...

 

[Kevin Watts]

The pre-owned market has been a thorn in the publishers side for a long time and the pre-owned market may well have been one of the reason's behind this price hike. Infinity Ward are pretty good at supporting their games for a long time, only recently an exploit was found online and they fixed it but they also support the game with DLC. Now I know DLC makes them money but at least it does show willing to support the product long term and could be a way for them to encourage gamers to buy new.

Perhaps if every copy of the game came with a unique code that you registered online and were then sent via email or console message a key each time a piece of DLC was released that either gave you a decent discount or perhaps made every other DLC release free to gamers who bought new they might get more new game sales. Companies already offer promo codes for content for people buying games new so why not take it a little further.

This would engender a feeling of ownership and perhaps forge much better relations between gamers and developers/publishers which Activision sorely need right now as people look to boycott and sign online petitions against them.

 

[David Martins]

It are hard times for games developers and publishers while development costs for games are rising.

for instance... call of duty 4 sold over 10 million copies. i don't think that the hard times are here...
oh... call of duty world at war sold over 9 million copies also. modern warfare 2 is going for the 10 million also so if those are bad times.

i play both cod4:mw and cod:ww and believe me when i say that those two games are filled with bad coding by the developers. they both use the same engine and world at war, that came last, is even buggier than the previous one.

if, let us say that each game went for 50$ which is low, activision wasn't able to pay the developers with 950 million dollars they must rethink what they are doing.

 

[Jamie R]

Do you have any clue how much the development of a game costs Jamie?

Also developers don't make much profit on a game: biggest part is going to the publisher and they happen to feel a big pain with the current economic crisis.

Personally i find games still pretty cheap. Those that complain that a single game is too expensive i have the following question:

"How come you wear $150 dollar sneakers and a $100 jeans, that last like 3 months and are developed in China for $5 each" <---- talking about profit

A good game you play for months, and some even for years. Hours and hours a week. So a calculation on the amount of fun time compared to the buy price is not even an issue imo

No I don't to be honest, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't think games are worth much more than £20 to be honest.

And an answer to that question - I don't . If I don't think something is worth it, I won't get it, simple as.