EA planning $70 price point for PS4 games.

[chalmers]

I don't pay new prices for games so this doesn't affect me. Too many people just HAVE to have the brand new game which makes 0 sense to me. Like for instance, I'm just starting Borderlands 2 which is about 6 months old now. I paid half its starting price.

Just get 6 months to a year behind and everything is cheap as hell.

 

[ImpulsE69]

It's because large businesses are money sinks that bleed money and have to please the stockholders. Small companies learn to cut corners and actually try to be careful with their cash. EA isn't the only ones who will do this, but I will be perfectly happy if every company following this thought process just fails miserably. I don't necessarily hate EA, because I think they aren't much different than any of the other big names.

Thankfully I (and most) have such a backlog of games, it really is no concern. The "milk our customers" model is very unconsumer friendly and is not something a company should be so proud of but they aren't putting this out there for their customers, they are saying it for the benefit of the shareholders. This isn't anything new.

 

[MrWizzard]

You're right. Any game that would be priced that high will surely fail and definitely not be one of the top selling games for that system.

Oh wait...


Whether you want to admit it or not, games are cheaper now than they've ever been. The market can handle $70 games again, and it won't surprise me if it becomes the new AAA standard price.

Came in here to post this. I remember paying $75 for goldeneye when I was young. Some people in here don't know of the past. Just like how people complain about mortgages at 6% back in the days of jimmy carter mortgages were at 20%. People don't realize how good they have it now.

 

[chalmers]

Came in here to post this. I remember paying $75 for goldeneye when I was young. Some people in here don't know of the past. Just like how people complain about mortgages at 6% back in the days of jimmy carter mortgages were at 20%. People don't realize how good they have it now.

Jimmy Carter... he's history's greatest monster!

 

[JackBurton]

They can charge whatever they want. I won't buy it until it hits <$40. And if that happens to be a year after its release date, so be it. I've got plenty of other crap to keep me busy.

 

[Sulaco]

You're right. Any game that would be priced that high will surely fail and definitely not be one of the top selling games for that system.

Oh wait...

Whether you want to admit it or not, games are cheaper now than they've ever been. The market can handle $70 games again, and it won't surprise me if it becomes the new AAA standard price.

Heh...I was the one that actually uploaded those images, scanned directly out of my Next Gen magazine from '97 and '98.

However, like was stated, all of those were cartridge games. In those same ads for PSX and Saturn (that I would be happy to upload), there's not a game over $50.

The statement that games are cheaper now than they've ever been is simply not true, in fact it's the exact opposite.
During the 32-bit (PSX, Saturn, eventually Dreamcast) all the way through the PS2 era (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox) all optical media-based games were retailed (in the US anyway), for no more than $50, except in very, very rare circumstances. And of course, the PC was the same. Only the N64, very late BIG name SNES, and oddball systems like the NegGeo or 3DO had those ridiculously high prices.
And it's only during THIS generation we saw the jump to $60, across the board.

As far as this topic goes, I think this is going to be huge. If you're talking about the PS4 retailing for (likely) around $500, $70 a pop for new games, and likely $70+ or more for another controller, is very likely going to limit sales pretty severely, at least if this is an industry wide trend.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I've seen people mention older game prices a bit, but they keep forgetting one major part of old game prices: the game medium. Cartridges were significantly more expensive to produce than optical media, and that was even more so if your game required more storage, which typically occurred with RPGs.

THIS THIS THIS!

Please people stop talking about SNES and Genesis game prices. A Disk is a few cents today, a cartridge was probably close to $10 just for the plastic back in 1992. Also look at how cheap the SNES system was. $80! N64 $150!

I bet you paid close to $300 for your Xbox or PS3 when you got it unless you waited a long time.

Further I remember Call of Duty MW2 was $60 on PC when every game up to that point that I can remember on PC was $50 and the console was $60. After that one release every game was $60 on day one.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I almost broke down and bought BF3.

Screw you EA, I won't

 

[Sonikku]

I thought the whole point of micro transactions was to reduce the up front price?

EA greedy bastards hellbent on ruining gaming, news at 11.

Good thing EA has NOTHING I care about.

Yeah right. I remember when EA had extra teams as an unlockable in Madden last gen. Now they're sold piecemeal as "bonus" day 1 dlc. That's on top of costing $10 more upfront AND having in game adverts. Now EA wants to charge even more up front? With micro transactions just to level your character? Ugh. No wonder they're the worst company in America.

 

[yottabit]

I like how they pointed out their gross margins went up because of digital distribution replacing box media, and yet they are raising the prices anyway. lol

 

[chalmers]

Are the games they publish that fascinating that they're must buys, especially at release day?

BF3 - not interested in multiplayer FPS, a cesspool of teabaggers.
The Sims - I'm not 12 years old.
Sports games - no interest, same game every year.
Mass Effect - no interest.
Dead Space - fun game, but can certainly live without.

Did I miss any? If so, what exactly is so great about what they publish?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Are the games they publish that fascinating that they're must buys, especially at release day?

BF3 - not interested in multiplayer FPS, a cesspool of teabaggers.
The Sims - I'm not 12 years old.
Sports games - no interest, same game every year.
Mass Effect - no interest.
Dead Space - fun game, but can certainly live without.

Did I miss any? If so, what exactly is so great about what they publish?

Crysis games, need for speed games, if the next Dragon Age game is any good, some people like Shogun and SimCity, SSX, The Secret World. There's also a bunch of unused properties that they could reboot. They have their hands in a lot of popular games.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

Micro-transactions is the sole reason I refuse to play Battlefield Heroes or Need For Speed World. Not bad games at all, but fuck outta here with them bullshit micro-transactions. What happened to a single payment on a game & that being all?

 

[lamedude]

103 million PS1s sold vs 33 million N64s
I would say cheaper games played a significant role in that. Most of the N64's best sellers are Nintendo games so I would say high prices did cause 3rd party games to fail.

 

[Soundmanred]

Honestly I'm at an age where I could stop buying games altogether and be perfectly fine the rest of my life with back catalog titles, "classic" games, etc.
I played about an hours worth of a new "AAA" title recently before turning it off and playing a 6 year old game and then an 11 year old game for hours each.
I get alot of games free from former coworkers and companies, but most of them sit unused until I get really bored.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Someone has to pay for the insane advertising budgets.

 

[Sulaco]

..Shogun..

 

[RedRooster]

Someone has to pay for the insane advertising budgets.

And dev budgets.
Cartridge era had 10 guys making games for 100K, that argument doesn't hold up either.

I will gladly buy BF4 for $70, and then the innevitable premium edition for another $30.
Everything else will just get bought when it's $20 on sale, no biggie.

 

[BoberFett]

As with most companies you can be sure the problem rests with the overpaying of the do nothings that "run" the companies (i.e. CEO's, CFO's, etc).

Good god some people are ignorant. Do you honestly believe that the compensation for the people you hate amounts to anything more than a cent or two per unit?

 

[Subyman]

I like how they say they are saving tremendous time and resources creating games with the PS4 while in the next line they are saying they are going to raise the price of them. Generating HD assets won't justify the price to gamers this gen. I never buy at launch. I wait until games are below 30 bucks and I normally don't have to wait long.

 

[smackababy]

I like how people are bitching about a $10 price increase over the price of a game that has persisted for like 15 years. Guess what? N64 games cost $70+ dollars 15 years ago. Gas also cost 4 time less than it does now. I am really confused as how people fail to understand inflation and the fact that as the cost of living increases, the prices of everything do.

 

[purbeast0]

I like how people are bitching about a $10 price increase over the price of a game that has persisted for like 15 years. Guess what? N64 games cost $70+ dollars 15 years ago. Gas also cost 4 time less than it does now. I am really confused as how people fail to understand inflation and the fact that as the cost of living increases, the prices of everything do.

to be fair, only a handful of n64 games cost $70+. same with snes.

i don't want to bring gas into this discussion, but people DO bitch about gas. but gas is a necessity for most people, while video games are solely entertainment.

i think what pisses people off is that there is absoultely no justification for the $10 price increase though. it is just like they are randomly deciding to charge more for games simply because it is a new console. so as of day X, the video game industry is just stamping a $10 extra tax on games.

i remember when 360 came out, first party games were $50 and 3rd party games were $60. as soon as first party devs saw that games were selling at $60, they raised their prices too.

me personally, if a game i really wanted cost $70, i will buy it. i did it 20+ years ago when super street fighter 2 came out on SNES, and i'll gladly do it now.

 

[RobDickinson]

Look what they are doing.

Crowing about bigger margins and more profitability
Stating games will be cheaper and quicker to make.
Creaming more cash flow with micropayments for virtual stuff that is already in the game
Leverageing cross platform gaming (you can bet this will cost you)
Increasing the cost of retail games for no other reason than they thing they can get away with it.

Typical big business extracting as much profit as it can, thats its job, as consumers its our job to stop them by not spending on their products.

 

[chalmers]

Same here, there's just not many games worth buying brand spanking new if you ask me. Everything goes down in price fairly quickly. I'll try and rattle off the games I bought at launch this generation:

Red Red Redemption: fun and worth it
Gears of War 3: fun and worth it
Halo 4: fun but meh, I don't even play it anymore. not worth it.

I think that's it, everything else I buy when it's < $40, usually < $30.

I'm pretty sure most people buy games new because they want to play multiplayer, so I guess I've been blessed with the ability to not give a rat's ass about playing a game with xXXXLOLYOURMOMxXXX, as I don't play multiplayer rarely if at all, so I don't mind being behind on new game releases.

 

[Tweak155]

You're right. Any game that would be priced that high will surely fail and definitely not be one of the top selling games for that system.

Oh wait...

<snip>


Whether you want to admit it or not, games are cheaper now than they've ever been. The market can handle $70 games again, and it won't surprise me if it becomes the new AAA standard price.

LOL @ EBGames ads. The most expensive place to buy games at the time. I bought plenty of SNES & N64 games, not once did I pay over $49.99 and I got plenty of games at release.

EDIT:

Toys R Us was a bad offender back then too. I almost always got my games from Target because I could walk there.