Warren Spector 'We need to drive down game prices'

[Evil Avatar]

gamesindustry.biz has posted some quotes (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/spector-we-need-to-drive-down-game-prices) from 'Game God' Warren Spector, talking about how the industry needs to lower game prices. Spector is hard at work on a Top Secret Disney-themed project.

"We've been a niche medium that over-charges for its product and therefore generates a lot of revenue which makes us a little bigger than Hollywood, which is crazy."

"The key is removing barriers to the creation of content and removing barriers to the consumption of content. Allowing people access to lots of it, at the lowest possible price where you can make a profit."

"I've always had this anecdotal belief that there's this magic price point for entertainment. And it's not a per dollar charge. No one thinks about how many hours they're going to get out of their entertainment dollars."

"If I've got a 20 dollar bill in my pocket I can go buy a book, go to a movie, but I can't buy a game. I can buy a CD, I can do so much even now, but you cannot buy a game."The man makes a good point.

[Johan]

"If I've got a 20 dollar bill in my pocket I can go buy a book, go to a movie, but I can't buy a game. I can buy a CD, I can do so much even now, but you cannot buy a game."

No; not precise enough. You can't buy a "newly released, all shiny and popular" game for $20, but there are more games for $20 and under than I can count, and many of them are amazingly good, classic ones. He's wrong on that point. Painfully wrong. You just have to wait for price drops. Patience is not an American virtue, however, in our "want it now" culture; borrow now, pay way later, if ever...

I rarely spend more than $20 on my games, because I'm willing to wait. I don't need it when the chattering, clamoring masses do. I can wait. However, there are occasional titles where I see the value in being on board early, for the purposes of online play or to join friends online. I'm under no illusions, however. I know that I'm paying more than I have to.

[greenapple]

You just have to wait for price drops.

The fact that price drops come so fast and are so large itself indicates a dysfunction in the system. The industry RELIES on impatience, hype, and misinformation to a make a vast majority of its profits.

[abso]

I'm willing to spend 10 dollars on a movie whether it is 75 minutes or 150 minutes. But for a game, I refuse to pay full price for a game that has under 10 hours of single-player experience. I'll wait for it to get to half-price, then buy it used. However, for games that offer longer single-player experiences, I'll gladly pay full price. In reality, I never have to pay full price because I'm so backlogged with games that I purchased for half-price or less.

But, if console games were max price of say 30-40 bucks, I'd probably be more likely to expand my purchases to those games that have shorter SP experiences. But for 50-60 dollars, I want maximum bang for my buck.

[Pluvious]

You can buy some DLC with that $20.

/sarcasm

[PopoWRX]

I'm one of those "time" gamers too, I only buy games that give me more then 20ish hours in gameplay. So that pretty much limits me to fighters/RPGS/sports games and I pretty much Gamefly everything else.

[Cutter99]

How do the theoretical price decreases for games cover the rampant personnel needs to make these games? As games get more complex, more and more specialized individuals are needed to focus on creating the ever-increasing number of detailed elements that compose a game.

I think the pricing of games is a very consistent thing that's ultimately controlled by the players. Short, shallow single-player games sell for discount prices far in advance of popular multi-player titles. Players know what constitutes value and game creators (in general) get rewarded for it.

[Demo_Boy]

The retail system introduces too much friction to get the price down to 20. MDF, packaging, piracy, used.

Go to DD and you can see pricing for games in the sub 20 bracket. The only issue is coverage - the audience is just smaller.

[Froggy]

You can quantify an experience, but it's difficult to do so in a way that achieves anything.

Anecdote: The Mona Lisa is not as good as the Last Supper because it's smaller.

[RMan]

The retail system introduces too much friction to get the price down to 20. MDF, packaging, piracy, used.
Doesn't seem to stop DVDs from getting lower prices.

[Meusli]

The lower price bracket is taken up by used games, how many publishers lower the price of their games after a month or two? Not many is the answer and that is why they have this used games eating all there profit nonsense.

[drakkarim]

i've been talking this crap for ever and nobody listens :) the walmart volume model of marketing, sell at a low price, but sell TONS.

and in the process you drive down piracy AND the second hand market.

[Johan]

Anecdote: The Mona Lisa is not as good as the Last Supper because it's smaller.

Also, the Last Supper is more filling. :D

[Deepsleeper]

No one thinks about how many hours they're going to get out of their entertainment dollars.

Spoken like a man who has never visited a gaming forum in his life.

[Gedd]

Yeah, OK Warren. Prices have been set at this level since NES games in the 80's. I think even the Atari2600 games cost as much in their day but I was only like 6yrs old at the time and didn't pay attention then. I consider myself lucky games aren't $120 these days. Valve already proved this shit with L4D anyway. Put a game on sale and more people buy it. Is it that hard of a concept to understand?

After Deus Ex: IW, does anyone even care what he thinks? I don't. (Even if it was all Harvey's fault)

[Evil Avatar]

Anecdote: The Mona Lisa is not as good as the Last Supper because it's smaller.

The Last Supper is better because it shows the J Man hanging out with his Homies and his Ho.

[abso]

How do the theoretical price decreases for games cover the rampant personnel needs to make these games? As games get more complex, more and more specialized individuals are needed to focus on creating the ever-increasing number of detailed elements that compose a game.

A lot of those costs can be slashed if you use an existing game engine and tools, rather than building your own (i.e. using the unreal 3 engine). Then you can focus on content creation instead of engine/tool creation, saving yourself a year+ worth of development time.

Then there is this misguided notion that without "phat grafx" games suck. The need for a 60 dollar game came from the fact that developers chose to spend more time on visual content than game play and story. Graphically simplistic games like World of Goo and Castle Crashes are fairly successful; their focus was on the game play aspects.

The sensory experience might get you to take a peek, but after an hour of playing, it is the game play that matters the most. Who cares about how wonderfully the grass is rendered if 90% of a game is spent inside a building. Prioritize development to focus on the interaction with the environment's content, rather than what the content looks like, and the amount of money spent on content creation will drop.

Even so, movies spend hundreds of millions to make, and then sell tickets for 10 dollars a pop and seem to break even or make mega-bucks fairly regularly through volume-sales. There is no reason why games cannot also make their killing through volume.

[Froggy]

Evil and Johan: Snaps and lol. Or lqtm, as the case may be.

Abso: +10 charisma for coining the term "phat grafx." Funniest thing I've read all day.

[fiercey]

If you guys want a game that gives you hours, CoD4 shows I've played 12.5 days (12.5 x 24 = 300 hours, holy god) so far and there really is no end in sight. I'm hopelessly addicted, I play an hour or two per night, plus several on the weekends. I've been playing games since King Quest back in 1984, but never ever have I put this much time into a damn game.

I have other Xbox360 games still in shrink wrap (bought at full-price, grrr) and really have no desire to crack any of them open.

-f

[gojira]

No; not precise enough. You can't buy a "newly released, all shiny and popular" game for $20, but there are more games for $20 and under than I can count, and many of them are amazingly good, classic ones. He's wrong on that point. Painfully wrong. You just have to wait for price drops. Patience is not an American virtue, however, in our "want it now" culture; borrow now, pay way later, if ever...


Evil Avatar.com needs to start a new feature: "Good Games for Under $20."

Also, DS games are cheap. Who says game makers don't use the Walmart volume model? Apparently the ones who's game print money do.

[Kayler]

I'm always a year or two behind new games that I'm playing. I rarely buy a new game anymore. $60 - $50 is just not worth it to me.

[Returner]

The price of games is fine. You want cheap games wait till they drop.

The price of games is worth it to me well not all games fuck Hanna montanna.

[DeejayKnight]

i've been talking this crap for ever and nobody listens :) the walmart volume model of marketing, sell at a low price, but sell TONS.

and in the process you drive down piracy AND the second hand market.

I've been saying this too (http://www.gamingtruth.com/2008/11/12/want-to-solve-the-used-game-dilemma-heres-how-to-do-it/), but most people don't want to hear it. :D

[Exodus]

Warren has my respect but he seriously needs to stop doing lectures and needs to make another game. I'm not saying this with a 'what have you done for me lately?' attitude but i would really like to see a game with all of his principles, ideals, thoughts, mantras, virtues materialized. Howzabout he makes a game like that and have it priced for what he proposes?

It's unrealistic because people don't make games for donuts unless they are just starting out but...yeah i would really like to see him practice what he teaches again. WITH A NEW IP PRZ.

[docfate]

Steam's model has sucked more money from my wallet than any other time in my adult life.

I have purchased games that I have played for a couple of minutes because they were "on sale".

Just this weekend I bought the Ubisoft Classic pack. 4 games, 10 bucks. (well, about $12 CDN). I'm working my way through Beyond Good and Evil.

I always have my eye out for a bargain too. EB here screws up their prices a lot. I got UT3 for $10. Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Collector's Ed for $10 (with the REGULAR edition beside it for $25, go figure).

Basically, I would spend $10-20 in a heartbeat with little hesitation. Make the price much more than $30 and it had better be a AAA+ title with 50 hours of gameplay a la Fallout 3.

[Sloth]

I can't recall the last time I paid full price for a game, I guess the wow expansions. Like most I just wait till they go on sale. That said it does say something about the industry when you only have to wait a couple months for most games to be in the bargin bin.

[SalaciousPuck]

What needs to happen is for development costs to drop. Right now we are in the Cecil B Demille era of game development....massive budgets with casts of 1000's. We need to get back to the point where someone can make something worth playing in their basement. The success of the Wii is definitely going to make everyone look at ways to do this.....be it through other revenue sources (ads, etc), higher level API's (like an Unreal level engine built in), or whatever.

And, personally, I never pay $60 for a game. This means I play nothing current.....but I don't have the time to anyway. If you wait a year - the price is cut 1/3 (and that's for a NEW one), you get more honest (less shill) reviews and if there is no one online playing it? That probably means it wasn't worth playing online to begin with. GTA IV ($20, used, from Gamefly) is next on my queue, fwiw.

[Syl]

I'm the crazy guy who doesn't make much money and doesn't mind paying $50 for a game.

Sure, it may be a hit on my wallet, but I don't really mind it at all; i get games when they become cheaper as well. That said, i just happen to buy many, many more games in general than most do.

[Hellstorm]

The first step as someone mentioned is to get the development cost of games down from the insane 20 million budgets. The Wii will probably take the wind out of the hardware arms race of MS and Sony, if not developers and publishers, as they ask Sony and MS to not go all out hardware wise. Too many companies have died this gen do to the costs. And I am sure MS and Sony no longer wish to lose billion of dollars to be first and second losers to a company that is stockpiling billions in profits.

Mass consumers won't pay over $299.00 of a video game machine, and $30-$40 seems to be the sweet spot for software prices for consoles. Then again, the overall best system this gen is the DS, IMO, with regards to price in system and games.

[Anenome]

More economic illiteracy makes the news. By this logic, luxury cars shouldn't sell, nor should gourmet restaurants survive - but they do.

Games have settled at their price-point, between $40 - $60. And it's been there for 25+ years. But, all of a sudden, 'Warren Spector' comes along and knows better. Well, I don't think so.

The real price revolution will come with improved online distribution - which probably won't be perfected for 2-3 more console generations (not 100% anyway).

[Exodus]

I'm the crazy guy who doesn't make much money and doesn't mind paying $50 for a game.

Sure, it may be a hit on my wallet, but I don't really mind it at all; i get games when they become cheaper as well. That said, i just happen to buy many, many more games in general than most do.

That's the thing, you shouldn't have to wait until games become cheaper they should already be affordable. This is an expensive hobby for some, let's take me for an example. My video game habit is a dedication of at least 300$ a month. This is comprised of PSP, PS3 and PC.

How often do you buy games exactly?

My last purchases within the last month.

Star Ocean: First Departure
Star Ocean: Second Departure
Socom Fire Team Bravo 2
Lumines(5$, had to!)
Prinny(Because pirate penguins kick fucking ass)
Resident Evil 5
Street Fighter IV
KillZone 2
Flower
Dawn of War 2

Now the psp games aren't going to be a regular thing but the ps3 and pc purchases most definitely.

Last Remnant
Empire Total War
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Drakensang
X3: Terran Conflict(MUST!)
Demigod(iffy)
Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2
Dyndasty Warriors: Strike Force(PSP)

This is what i'm looking at for the next month. I'm a pretty well rounded gamer and any fan of any genre of game i picked can pretty much agree with my purchases as justified.

50$ is not affordable. I can live with $34.99. That, i think is the happy medium of what all games should come to. I do think that developers should make more money, I also think publishers need to reorganize how the industry works. The business model they are following is great...for them but is it good for the industry?

[Anenome]

50$ is not affordable. I can live with $34.99. That, i think is the happy medium of what all games should come to. I do think that developers should make more money, I also think publishers need to reorganize how the industry works. The business model they are following is great...for them but is it good for the industry?

- Great thing about the free market: if you think it can work, get off your ass and try it. Do you really think it hasn't been tried?

You think they're business model sucks? Ok, go write your own, nothing stopping you or anyone else.

The biggest thing that happened to make game dev'ing affordable was for the Wii to become popular. On the Wii you don't need to devote $100 million to produce an excellent game, to produce an HDTV game which only a subset of gamers would even experience as HD.

[Exodus]

- Great thing about the free market: if you think it can work, get off your ass and try it. Do you really think it hasn't been tried?

You think they're business model sucks? Ok, go write your own, nothing stopping you or anyone else.

The biggest thing that happened to make game dev'ing affordable was for the Wii to become popular. On the Wii you don't need to devote $100 million to produce an excellent game, to produce an HDTV game which only a subset of gamers would even experience as HD.

It's laughable that you're getting hostile about this 'get off my ass'. Yes it is a free market but guess who has the money? I could take out a loan but for a wii game? I'm not interested in running a company/studio/development team. I am however interested however in writing and design. I do think developers get short changed. I do think that games should be more affordable. I do think that games deserve to be more readily available to everyone so not just people who are financially well off can experience it.

You said it yourself with the wii. I'm saying what if we did what the wii does but for all games. No more 69.99, no more 59.99. You speak as I could simply write this kind of business model up and what prey tell game would this prevalent on? I'm not interested in making money off of games. I'm interested in making games very much the length of a novel. A JRPG, a CRPG. That is my stage. Publishers already have ties to so many things, contracts, funds devoted and you want me to write up a business model and say hey let's do things this way when I would have to know their infrastructure and go through all of their financial work. Don't be an asshole just because I'm saying it can be done better because it can.

[ascl]

I really can't say I am unhappy about games prices. I'd love them to be cheaper, but given I am happy to pay USD $10 for watching a movie at the cinema (obviously more by the time you factor in wife + dinner + popcorn), or roughly the same for a DVD, which is a much shorter experience, I can't complain.

Sure, I am not really affected by 'sticker shock'... I look at the amount of use I am going to get out of an item and factor that in. So spending a lot on my PC and monitor is fine by me, since i use it (a lot). Ditto with spending a large chunk of change on a good seat (my ass is in this seat a whole lot). Break it down to a per hour cost and things look a lot different (imo).

So, paying 40-50 USD for a game that gives me 10 hours entertainment is really not bad... even better if the game gives me 20+ hours.

Obviously I am not typical however. Most people prefer small frequent out lays than a single large one, even if logically the latter works out better.

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

A lot of those costs can be slashed if you use an existing game engine and tools, rather than building your own (i.e. using the unreal 3 engine). Then you can focus on content creation instead of engine/tool creation, saving yourself a year+ worth of development time.

I disagree long term. Licensing an Engine costs you cash up front and points on the tail end. Creating an in house engine (or buying an existing one the way Vicarious Visions bought Alchemy) will pay dividends in the long run

Then there is this misguided notion that without "phat grafx" games suck. The need for a 60 dollar game came from the fact that developers chose to spend more time on visual content than game play and story. Graphically simplistic games like World of Goo and Castle Crashes are fairly successful; their focus was on the game play aspects..

Without "phat grafx" games do suck :) Was World of Goo fairly successful? If so, please define what that means :)
Why do games like Call of Duty 4 sell so well? "Phat Grafx" as you put it, are able to draw people into a game moreso than ever before. Marrying visuals with gameplay make for a fabulous gameplay experience. Not to mention that high end processing allows for this rash of coop gameplay we've been seeing and enjoying of late.


The sensory experience might get you to take a peek, but after an hour of playing, it is the game play that matters the most. Who cares about how wonderfully the grass is rendered if 90% of a game is spent inside a building. Prioritize development to focus on the interaction with the environment's content, rather than what the content looks like, and the amount of money spent on content creation will drop.

How do you figure? Increasing the interaction means increasing dev time. You just don't get that for free. It requires gobs of coder and artist time depending on what you're seeking.

Even so, movies spend hundreds of millions to make, and then sell tickets for 10 dollars a pop and seem to break even or make mega-bucks fairly regularly through volume-sales. There is no reason why games cannot also make their killing through volume.

When the volume isn't there, then your logic is flawed :) First off, how many movies come out in a year cost hundreds of millions? Did Zack and Miri Make a Prono cost that much to make? Plus, all you need to see a movie is access to a movie theater. To play an Xbox 360 game you need to buy a console (Thus you are catering to a smaller audience).
When people spend between $300 to 500 on a new console, they want to see games that justify their purchase. What were the bigger sellers over the past few years? Call of Duty 4 and 5, Gears of War 1 and 2, Halo 3, GTA 4, Metal Gear Solid: SoP, etc. These were all big budget titles that people bought consoles to play. To that end, great visuals were needed to match the great gameplay each one brought to the table. If Gears or War looked like Ikari Warriors, would half as many people have bought it?

It's a tough biz that I wish was as simple as you itemize it here, man. As a gameplayer, I really do wish new next gen titles were cheaper. As a game maker I understand why many have to cost what they do. Is the system flawed? Sure is! However, at the end of the day, if you want deeper gameplay, better visuals, deeper online play on better hardware, it will require larger groups of people one way or another.

[Anenome]

It's laughable that you're getting hostile about this 'get off my ass'. Yes it is a free market but guess who has the money? I could take out a loan but for a wii game? I'm not interested in running a company/studio/development team. I am however interested however in writing and design. I do think developers get short changed. I do think that games should be more affordable. I do think that games deserve to be more readily available to everyone so not just people who are financially well off can experience it.

You said it yourself with the wii. I'm saying what if we did what the wii does but for all games. No more 69.99, no more 59.99. You speak as I could simply write this kind of business model up and what prey tell game would this prevalent on? I'm not interested in making money off of games. I'm interested in making games very much the length of a novel. A JRPG, a CRPG. That is my stage. Publishers already have ties to so many things, contracts, funds devoted and you want me to write up a business model and say hey let's do things this way when I would have to know their infrastructure and go through all of their financial work. Don't be an asshole just because I'm saying it can be done better because it can.

- First I'm not getting hostile I'm just giving it to you straight. I'm talking about your arrogance, your cock-suredness. You say you're sure it can be done better but you have absolutely no reason to think so, and give no reasons. You're like those economically illiterate people in politics who say that everyone should be able to make a living wage. You're living in a dream world where intentions and desires are more important than facts? Prices are set by the market, as the interplay between what consumers want to spend and what producers want to receive. As such, what people are 'willing to pay' is what the price is. You can't simply drop that price to achieve some random social goal like 'more people \ less afluent people should be able to play'. The only way to achieve that is with subsidies, and that begins to have negative affects on the market as it creates economic distortions.

Listen, if developers thought they were getting so short changed that it wasn't worth it, THEY'D STOP. We all would. Little fact of the world: no one thinks they're being paid what they're worth, everyone thinks they're worth more. They do it because they are being paid enough to do it.

Devs need money, publishers need devs for the content. That symbiosis is unlikely to change any time soon, and it works. Even with increased digital distribution you'll still need publishers. The Wii made dev'ing a game cheaper and this was a wise move, sure, but it also made high-end production literally impossible, and that's not so great, they lost much of the hard-core that way, even though it turned out to be an excellent trade-off, ultimately.

With digital distribution, the savings come from the shipping, storing, packaging, etc., middle-men that are cut out, but then you have newer, more high-tech middlemen in their place: the server operators, the ISPs, but these do cost less than the men they replaced, so it works at a cost-savings, but it's not mind-blowingly lower.

[Syl]

How often do you buy games exactly?

I generally spend $50 on games a week, which is either one new (or newish) or various used games + the steam sale.

My reasons for not buying everything new also relates to the simple fact that I have no time for it.

In the past month: (Wii/PC)
Burnout Paradise (PC)
Mad World
Shadow Hearts (used)
Shadow Hearts: Covenant (used)
-Through PC DLC
Assassin's Creed
The Path
Caster
Dangerous Highschool Girls in Trouble
King's Bounty: The Legend


I'll probably be picking up Rhythm Heaven before the week is out.

I'm sitting at 520 games total according to my backloggery; and considering that I'm only 22, this is rather substantial.

[Exodus]

- First I'm not getting hostile I'm just giving it to you straight. I'm talking about your arrogance, your cock-suredness. You say you're sure it can be done better but you have absolutely no reason to think so, and give no reasons. You're like those economically illiterate people in politics who say that everyone should be able to make a living wage. You're living in a dream world where intentions and desires are more important than facts? Prices are set by the market, as the interplay between what consumers want to spend and what producers want to receive. As such, what people are 'willing to pay' is what the price is. You can't simply drop that price to achieve some random social goal like 'more people \ less afluent people should be able to play'. The only way to achieve that is with subsidies, and that begins to have negative affects on the market as it creates economic distortions.

Listen, if developers thought they were getting so short changed that it wasn't worth it, THEY'D STOP. We all would. Little fact of the world: no one thinks they're being paid what they're worth, everyone thinks they're worth more. They do it because they are being paid enough to do it.

Devs need money, publishers need devs for the content. That symbiosis is unlikely to change any time soon, and it works. Even with increased digital distribution you'll still need publishers. The Wii made dev'ing a game cheaper and this was a wise move, sure, but it also made high-end production literally impossible, and that's not so great, they lost much of the hard-core that way, even though it turned out to be an excellent trade-off, ultimately.

With digital distribution, the savings come from the shipping, storing, packaging, etc., middle-men that are cut out, but then you have newer, more high-tech middlemen in their place: the server operators, the ISPs, but these do cost less than the men they replaced, so it works at a cost-savings, but it's not mind-blowingly lower.

It's not a dream world. What will have to happen is an entire overhaul. A redesign of how the industry over all handles games. Where the publisher who very much like any entertainment publishing backer does take the brunt of impact when the product fails. What my point? It means that a complete change in how the product and consumer relationship is handled. Xbox live though i am loath to say it is the example of the business model of how it needs to work on a more general scale. Not just online games but games enmass. A guarantee of stable revenue for not only developers but for publishers. It follow the mmo model and yes it means we might have to pay a subscription fee but there's a point, which me and you are obviously at where things like gamefly make more sense but the fee would obviously have to be higher in order for this to be worthy. This isn't a fully worked out thing, this is just an example of where this could go.

I've been gaming avidly since the late 80's buying even diskettes for 5$, if I were to pull out my entire library on you which was more than where you were at when you were 22 and is at the last 4x more than what you have now but i didn't post to do the 'i used to walk through snow to a computer shop' story on you. What i did mean by my previous post is that I am spending well over a 100$ and pretty much closer to 300$ on a monthly basis. I do like owning games that I consider great pieces of work and or diamonds in the rough(drakensang).

I know how the developer -> publisher -> distributor/retailer -> consumer system works. I do know how digital distribution also cuts cost and how this is also upsetting the middle man especially when digital distribution prices can be priced lower than what the brick and mortar can sell it for. This is only a sign of the times if anything they should have been getting their hands and investing in digital distribution before hand.

Our industry is dedicated to making bags of money off of what sells, they want franchises, they want succesful mmos that will catch on. Unless you're part of the well established developing houses chances are your contract is going to be low balled. Yes, a subscription based relationship between publisher and consumer would mean that the Halo's, the games that spike sales and have massive return might not mean anything since people will be paying the same monthly but it also means that when they aren't making those halos they are still recieving the same money throughout all of that development time for the next one. I could throw bullshit at you like 'it's easier to budget forecast' and 'stabler revenue enables more readily income to allocate all the time instead of spiking during christmas' and what not. You seem like a fairly intelligent fellow so I won't.

But you're also out of your mind if you think that the current business model is fine and should be left alone. Do you even work in the industry? I mean seriously we have programmers who get underpaid terribly, working their ass off and even artists who could simply just quit and work for film or create systems someone else for double or triple the salary they have now. People aren't in video games for the money, it's because they fucking love it. You REALLY have to love video games to be in this business and you will sacrifice life for this job. It's not all roses for people who don't work at established development houses. The burn out rate is high. Lastly it's arrogant for you to believe that it doesn't require changing. Peoples lives are tied up in this industry and this survival of the fittest business 'free market' is great for encouraging great things, but over all that means they also eat their young as Nolan put it. This really has to stop and we're heading towards it. I don't know who will make the first move first much like skynet when it became self aware. A subscription system very much like gamefly could very well be one of the possibilities, not THE answer but definitely an indication of just how much of a change the system would have to make.

[Johan]

I'm sitting at 520 games total according to my backloggery; and considering that I'm only 22, this is rather substantial.

Goodness...I thought I was bad at somewhere in the range of 250. I'm around double your age, at around half your games. :eek:

[Syl]

Goodness...I thought I was bad at somewhere in the range of 250. I'm around double your age, at around half your games. :eek:

http://www.backloggery.com/syl

I see a good deal and I take it; some games that I own i haven't even opened yet. I got all 4 of the original .hack's for $20 total. Then other stuff like the massive new years steam sale probably accounted for 20 games or so.

I'm as much a game collector as i am a game player; my long term goal is to play every game i own to completion; but its quite honestly unreasonable given how busy my schedule is between School, Work and fun.

I'm just really good at balancing my budget.

[Jadbalja]

Games are currently following the model that VHS tapes used to follow -- high price at release (around $80 - 90), followed by a huge price drop (down to $14 - $19). The video industry called the first "pricing for rental" (since they did it more to get what they considered their share from the video rental places) and the latter "pricing for sale". Just before DVDs came around, several studios decided to try out pricing for sale from the first day of release, and lo and behold, discovered they were making more money that way. So pricing for rental went away for VHS tapes and DVDs had a much different tiered pricing scheme ($20 -> $14.99 -> $9.99).

Game manufacturers should do the same thing the movie studios did: pick a title or two and try and different pricing scheme. Maybe Spector is right and maybe he's wrong, but no one will know until they give it a shot. My guess is it would work, and at least somewhat reduce piracy.

[Limech]

Steam's model has sucked more money from my wallet than any other time in my adult life.

I have purchased games that I have played for a couple of minutes because they were "on sale".

Same here. The worst part is that I don't have the time to play them all.
I mostly do it to support the developers if I feel the game is awesome even if I won't end up playing it.

Examples (games bought but not finished playing):
World of Goo (steam) (already had 'downloaded' it but bought it anyway)
Unreal Tournament 2004 (gog.com)
Unreal Tournament 3 (steam)
Assassin's Creed (steam)
ID pack (steam)
L4D (steam when it was on special.. played it twice).
LBP
Killzone 2
Burnout Paradise City PS3 $10
Motorstorm Pacific Rift

And all those are just "recently" like in the past 3 months.
Those other Ubisoft specials this week were tempting but I had to put my foot down and tell myself no.

But I want to get back to my mode where I buy a single game and dedicate my life to it.
Example: Battlefield 2 or Call of Duty 4.
I.e. learn it inside out, become very good at it, play it competitively, etc.

I'm hoping Battlefield 3 will be that game.

[Rirath]

No; not precise enough. You can't buy a "newly released, all shiny and popular" game for $20, but there are more games for $20 and under than I can count, and many of them are amazingly good, classic ones. He's wrong on that point. Painfully wrong. You just have to wait for price drops.

Exactly...

That said, I do think games are rather pricey. That's why I Gamefly or wait til the price drops.

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

Game manufacturers should do the same thing the movie studios did: pick a title or two and try and different pricing scheme. Maybe Spector is right and maybe he's wrong, but no one will know until they give it a shot. My guess is it would work, and at least somewhat reduce piracy.

Interesting comparison :)

Truth told, publishers are given options before they go to manufacture to select a particular band of pricing. Each band offers smaller payments to the 1st party, but also reduces the profit margin.

For example (and not saying these are EXACT #'s, just a sample), if you chose a band where you would retail at $9.99 on the PS2, Sony would charge you $2.00 a disk (vs $8 at a higher band). However, after cost of goods and such, the publisher would stand to make $2-3 a disk.

Like I said, those aren't exact #'s, but something to give you an idea. So for that to work, the game would have had to cost very little if a profit is to be made (Let's say 3-500,000 vs the X million a typical budget would be).

Every now and again, you see game makers put out a big budget title at lower bands in hopes of seeing higher volume. Remember when NFL 2K was $19.99? I would wager they made next to nothing on that, despite higher sales, as they had to pay royalties to the NFL and Player's Association. Nonetheless, it was a cool move and got people's attention.

So, yeah ... you may be onto something, and some options are there, however it all varies on a game to game basis.