EA planning $70 price point for PS4 games.

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Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
Are they doing well? The price of movie tickets have gone up considerably. The record industry has imploded. Gaming companies are bleeding money. The successful ones are either HUGE corporations or have other ventures propping them up. You think Valve would still be around without Steam constantly keeping their books out of the red? The gaming industry isn't as healthy as people seem to want to believe.

The biggest problem is the ballooning game budgets and/or very risky ventures. THQ ran into massive problems because of the utter failure of their uDraw tablet. A sort of parallel example is how Logitech has been rather rocky the past few years after sinking a lot of money into the Logitech Revue (GoogleTV device) and watching it fail.

Even the mammoth Blizzard, with a money printing machine (WoW) sold to Activision.

Blizzard didn't sell its company to Activision. Blizzard was originally owned by Sierra, which was purchased by Vivendi under their entertainment division, which was sold to Activision. Blizzard probably could've blocked the deal since arguably... they're the only worthwhile commodity in said deal. Although, honestly... the deal was ridiculously sweet for them. If I remember correctly, Vivendi was looking to off-load its entertainment division for awhile, and Blizzard was essentially given an almost infinite leash to work with. They also have a fairly successful publisher as a sort of sister-company.
 

holden j caufield

Diamond Member
Dec 30, 1999
6,324
10
81
Aren't they just slowly raising the threshold like gas prices. This is beyond inflation but if they do this to their best sellers then they can charge $64.99 or 59.99 for their less popular games and have the masses think it's a bargain.
 

Nintendesert

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2010
7,761
5
0
Cartridge cost was a factor back then and was a limiting factor for lots of games because they didn't want to become to large because it was going to cost more. On top of the license cost to the console companies, the publishers also had to buy the carts from the console manufactures as well. The medium was part of games cost back then. One of the big things that was pushed as a big positive going to CD's (CD's had a negativity to them due to load times). Sega CD games MSRP was $49.99 back then while we would routinely see cartridge games for $70 in that same time period.



That however means absolutely nothing to consumers. Consumers don't care how much something costs. I don't do production costs vs. retail costs when I buy something. The only thing that matters is what retail costs.

What I'm saying to you is that the consumer in the past has been willing to pay that higher retail price. If the production costs come down the only ones that benefit are the companies. The consumer's willingness to pay higher retail prices is what leads the big companies down this road thinking they can charge more again.