Game Pricing - Fair or Foul...

[pipfromslitherine]

A number of people in the Imperial Glory thread have said they see $50 as too pricey for a game. So I thought a robust discussion might be in order

Consider:

- Why is $50 too much for a game, yet $45 for 3 DVDs - giving less hours of entertainment - seems to be acceptable?

- How will rising development costs (not for us at Slitherine - we found a cheap source of condemned meat to eat ) impact the price of games?

Cheers

Pip

[zharrgonn]

What a can of worms this is.

I don't care what DVD's cost as I don't buy them. If there are some that I want, and those are few and far between, then I get someone else to buy them for me for my birthday, or Christmas. If I want to see it before then I rent it.

Games are different though as I do buy them, but not many, usually three or four or five a year. I often wait until they hit the bargin bin to buy them, but once in a while (as in your products case) I buy them via download. I really like that, as I can get it immediately and play it without worrying about have the CD in the drive. Annoying that. And I don't worry about breaking the CD. And its usually cheaper.

For me if a game costs more that $40 USD I usually wait for it to go onsale or hit the bargin bin. I mgiht go up to $50 for something that I find really interesting, but that is tops for me. Spending $60 to $70 for a game is just something I do not do. Its just a psychological thing really.

[duncan]

I've only bought

-Start Wars trilogy
-LOTR trilogy

and music DVDs, but never three at one time. I'm not that into DVDs.

...but I spent an unreasonable % of my money in CDs and vynils. Remember the "High Fidelity" movie character played by John Cusack? That's me. Anyway, I keep listening to my Coltrane Cds over and over again.


PC games, my limit is 40 ?‚¬. I usually wait till the medium priced re-edition. I won't pay 60 ?‚¬ for Sims 2 (I won't pay 30 e anyway), but I'm sure there's margin to sell it cheaper and get benefits. But people are gonna buy it anyway, it's going to be a top-seller at any price. So let's charge 60 ?‚¬. Increase in development costs are due to increase in people working in the graphics department or marketing campaign, so it's going to add little to the game. The designer team will be as small as always and I like to buy ideas, no fancy graphics. So if they raise the price cause of fancy graphics or an expensive agressive marketing I'm not going to buy that game. The AI is as dumb/bright as always and the design of the games is, overall, poorer than ten years ago IMHO.

[taibi]

$50 for a game is cheap...

Most new games here in Denmark are more than that. They usually start around DKR 300 which is about $52 at the moment - and that is online, so you have postage as well.

In stores most games are from DKR 350 and upwards.

I get my games online, mainly Jersey based internet stores...

[bodidley]

I don't know if I'm the first American commenting, but I have more DVDs than I can shake a stick at. The old man bought a seperate piece of furniture just to hold DVDs, and there are scores of 'em sitting on top of it because it's too full. I've got so many DVD's I could use the inlays as wallpaper if I were so inclined. I've got a grocery list of DVD's I'm waiting to buy: Bataille D'Algiers, Ikiru, Sword of Doom, Branded to Kill, Pulp Fiction, Youth of the Beast (damn Criterion collection jacked up their prices). And you know what? Millions of Americans are just like me.

I haven't paid release price for a game in almost a year. Why am I willing to spend so much money on movies but not on games? Ironicly it's because movies are way cheaper. It's now cheaper to buy the DVD and see it as many times as you want for years to come than to go to the theater.

It doesn't make buisness sense to me to jack up prices to compensate for improved graphics quality. This will only reduce your customer base. You also have to remember that gamers are now paying a lot of additional money for graphics cards and the latest consoles. One of the most basic principles of industrialized capitalism is to sell more volume. Now, I don't think Slitherine has the popularity or publishing ties-yet- to sell games at very cheap prices. On the other hand, when a consumer compares prices to decide what he wants to buy, $35 is going to beat $50 any day so long as it is a good product. I'm certain that almost everyone who posts in this forum would gladly pay $50 for a new Slitherine product, but I hope Slitherine's customer base is much larger than the number of people registered for the forum!

[sum1won]

I only buy DVD's that I like, and I get most of mine on sale. As a result, I got all three lord of the rings for 20$. As for games, I don't spend more than 30$ normally. Sorry pip, but I got spartan from ebay...

Of course, I do spend a bit more then that on WH miniatures.... Stupid prices.

Sadly, this will probably mean that I won't get Stronghold 2 for at least 2 years, when I actually get a decent video card.

[pipfromslitherine]

Ahhh - reselling. My favourite bugbear. Bottom line - it hurts developers. People should pay for enjoying the game, not just for owning the box. But it seems to be an unstoppable juggernaut these days...

Most of the replies seem to say that games cost too much, and they would never pay full price. Obviously we here in this august club are only a small sample of the gaming public, but it does raise the question: how did WoW sell 1.5M copies at $50-60 a box if people think games are overpriced?

Discuss

Cheers

Pip

[efthimios]

Because suckers are born every day?

Also some people have more money than sense. I have met people that waste money because they do not have to work for them (parents give them the money). They go and buy expensive meat or something every day, not because they like it, but because it is expensive.

For this example (WoW), the same people are willing to give EVERY MONTH money to Blizzard, money is obviously not a problem for them as much as others, so they have no problem to pay the first 50 or whatever is needed.
Would "you" pay 50-60$ then 10 or whatever the sub is, each month to play say Counter strike, Civilization, Age of empires? Me no think so.
Would WoW sell far more if the price was at 20 and each month was like 3? Far more?

[pipfromslitherine]

I think the argument that anyone willing to pay fullprice is either rich or stupid doesn't really hold water... I've paid for WoW since Jan (and I'm neither rich nor stupid) and played over 250 hours for about $110. Personally I think that's pretty good value. You capitalise 'EVERY MONTH' as if it's bizarre, but surely monthly fees are the norm for MMORPGs? I certainly wouldn't pay monthly for the other games you mention, because they aren't games which give me content etc for it.

In my case (and perhaps many others) WoW saves me money because I don't buy anything else - not bad for $15 a month Guild Wars is trying a different model, with much less content and boxed expansions for it. Will be interesting to see how it works.

But back to the main point - why in general do people feel games aren't 'worth' fullprice? It's hard for us as developers to be objective, but by any rational measure they seem pretty good value to me Is it just because it's a big dollop of money in one go?

It's interesting to get other points of view...

Cheers

Pip

[leonidas]

Well, Pip a lot of your points seem to make rational sense. The problem is that the consumer is never a completely rational animal (despite what some people have claimed, we are NOT homo economicus). How people calculate value, how they perceive (and react to) risk is something social scientists are still trying to figure out.

The problem when comparing movie DVD's to computer games is mostly one of risk perception. DVD's ARE cheaper. When choosing between 3 things of value or 1 expensive thing at the same total cost, people feel safer with the 3 things. But more importantly, most people who buy DVD's have already seen the movie, or at least know a LOT about it. With computer games, the purchaser is often taking a HUGE risk. Playing a Demo helps, but there's still so many unknowns involved. I'd be willing to bet most purchasers don't play the Demos or see it at their friends house anyway. So they're left with the uncertainty of: Is this game going to be great graphically AND strategically?, will it be too easy/too hard? Will there be too many bugs? Will the company support the product? etc. (These days the last 2 questions often end up having very bad answers. I'm sure everyone here has been burned on these issues with some games). People hate uncertainty. When you add a high price to that, it just is too much risk for something more unknown.

One way for computer game consumers to reduce risk, is to wait. This solves several problems: The price goes down (thus reducing the risk/reward ratio), you can read message boards to see how the community reacts, see how the company supports the game etc. Unless a company has a good track record (like Slitherine does for me) I often do this. Because I KNOW a lot about Slitherine, and have had mostly positive experiences with their games (there's always room for improvement , I would probably pay 100 US dollars for Legion 2.

Now, how did WoW or RTW sell so much? I can't say for sure. Perhaps, through REPETITIVE hype/marketing, the consumers at least thought they knew a lot about the games. So, this reduced their sense of risk. When you are bludgeoned over the head a lot, you at least think you know what the club sort of looks like. And, due to the Mere Exposure Effect, you actually start liking it (of course there's a point where this diminishes). I was VERY leery of RTW but after hearing over and over again how the strategy part was going to be improved, my resistance was weakened, my perception clouded, and I bought the damn thing. I regret it, and will NEVER buy a CA game until I wait a LONG time to see what really happens. Of course, some people probably genuinely like those games. But, I'd be willing to bet that if Slitherine had the marketing, had their hands in all the right pockets, such that more people could be exposed to their games, they would have a large fan base willing to cough up the dough too. Civ3 sold a lot of copies, and I have always maintained that the majority of Civ3 people would enjoy Slitherine products (not sure about Arena though). But, they just haven't heard about them--that is kind of a catch-22 isn't it?

[ste]

I would be happy to pay $50 (US?) for a game I wanted to play (thats about 30 of the queens i expect). Most top of the line stuff in the UK goes for about 30-40, its just a shame the developers dont see a bigger cut of it in my opionion, after all they are the ones busting their buts to get the games on shelves, etc. not the retailler... why should some suit take 40 odd percent of the price of a game, truelly shocking. Thats the biggest injustice about games prices IMHO.

[pipfromslitherine]

Well I won't argue with that

Unfortunately buying online will take a while to become the dominant form of purchasing. Esp while a lot of the world (cough)UK(cough) still has pitifully slow and expensive broadband...

Plus some people just want the box.

"But what if my machine crashes!"
"You can download it again."

"But what if you go out of business and your servers all explode!!"
"Errrrr..."



Pip

[pipfromslitherine]

One way for computer game consumers to reduce risk, is to wait. This solves several problems: The price goes down (thus reducing the risk/reward ratio), you can read message boards to see how the community reacts, see how the company supports the game etc. Unless a company has a good track record (like Slitherine does for me) I often do this. Because I KNOW a lot about Slitherine, and have had mostly positive experiences with their games (there's always room for improvement , I would probably pay 100 US dollars for Legion 2.

I'll hold you to that Small bills ideally...

But surely demos are a way to alleviate this problem? Although the RTW one didn't let you play half the game, which personally annoyed me.

Pip

[bodidley]

how did WoW sell 1.5M copies at $50-60 a box if people think games are overpriced?

Discuss

Cheers

Pip

One explanation is that there actually is a huge market for games. Let's consider if WoW was priced at $20. Do you still think it would have sold 1.5 million copies? I don't. I think it would have sold 7 million copies. The general idea is that high prices are what cages the gaming industry beast

[sum1won]

Hey, if it helps, I did get CoW from your site.... Couldn't find it on ebay


But what it comes down to is advertising. The DVDs/movies are advertised a huge amount, so people buy them. PC games from big companies are advertized a lot, and sell very well at high prices. Small companies often can't afford that level of advertising, and therefore have trouble selling at higher prices, as people have seen fewer reviews saying "WOW THIS GAME IS SO COOL, 98%.


I am still irritated about B&W. Heard it was SO good, buy the game, and it turns out to be horse manure. The reviewers obviously hadn't played it very long.

[pipfromslitherine]

Let's consider if WoW was priced at $20. Do you still think it would have sold 1.5 million copies? I don't. I think it would have sold 7 million copies. The general idea is that high prices are what cages the gaming industry beast

Ignoring the special case of WoW (are there 7 million people who are happy playing online?) the biggest flaw in that argument is that why aren't publishers doing it? If they could make more money from selling cheaper then I am pretty sure they would. When games were 10 quid there were still the same 'games cost too much!' cries from the public...

An alternative explanation could be that the majority of sales happen at the full pricepoint because people want it now, want it when their friends get it etc. Perhaps the silent majority think that prices aren't that bad?

All good robust debate. I love it!

Pip

[bodidley]

We can't assume publishers always make the right decisions. After all, they want their money, and they want it now. When were games 10 pounds? I suppose I'm too young to remember that.

[efthimios]

Hmm, me too cannot remember when games were 10 pounds. The cheapest I can remember them were closer to 20 or so back in the late 80s.

As for why the publishers do not sell the games for lower prices if they are bound to sell more, well they know that a lot of people will buy the game at first anyway, and having their minds set on that quick certain income they avoid thinking that they could release it at lower price for longer term greater sales?
Perhaps they are just justified with the sales? Or they are thinking "the game is going to tank, we might as well charge a lot for it so that the suckers will buy it before realizing it is a bad full of bugs game". Still, it doesn't make much sense. Forget about it.

[bodidley]

An industry before it has had a price war is like an industry that has not yet come of age. You can't just drop your price to $20 when you've been spending on development and everybody else is charging $50. Your consumer base hasn't grown in response to lower prices and increased awareness, you have to spend money on advertising to make sure people know your product exists, and you have to make enough money to survive. Sooner or later though, one developer is going to try get the jump on everybody else by charging $40 or $35, and everybody else is going to have to have to keep up or lose their customers.

[duncan]

Don't know about Blizzard, but here in Spain there is a publisher call FX interactive who's selling new games for 19,95 ?‚¬. They released decent titles (Celtic Kings, Patrician III, Sacred, Longest Journey...). Their games are always on top of the best sellers list in Spain. I'm pretty sure that eac and everyone of this title wouldn't sell that much if it wasn't for the cheap price. And it works because the company is still publishing games six or seven years after. And their games are entirely in spanish and they use proffesional voice-overs (Gandalf spanish voice for Sacred, for example). They also use agressive marketing campaigns, including spots on TV and the leading magazines.


And they're still making money from it. People here love them because of the prices, never heard a complain about 20 ?‚¬ being too expensive. And how big was Sacred in UK or USA compared to Spain (in cualitative terms, don't compare the sales figures in 240 milion USA with the 40 milion Spain)???


I'm not complaining about the game prices. If a game costs 50 ?‚¬, that's company/publisher decision and I won't buy it. If price doesn't go down, I won't be playing it. So companies are losing money with me with their politics (specially big ones).

Bye