| Post new topic Reply to topic | Message |
|
||||
 |
Even though this is probobly going to rail off into OT type discussions, I decided to plunk this thread in PS2 Lounge since I am relating my point to a PS2 game.
What is up with the rapid plummit in game prices after they are released, along with the sort of "midnight madness" sales that have been going on at places like Circuit City. I recently snuck in at just the right time at ebgames.com, and scored Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, for $14.99 (brand new sealed). I just got it right now in the mail, and looking over the game has spawned me to actually voice these opinions. Even hough the thoughts have been mulling around in my head for quite sometime now. I feel guilty holding it in my hand right now. It's as if I walked right into Hideo Kojima's offices, glazed over his development team, and went "yoink". Scurrying out the door with my copy of MGS3. Why do I feel guilty? Movies on DVD sell for around 12.99-19.99 and they make the movie industry oodles of cash. In most cases movies have much larger budgets and employ far more people than games. So what makes video games so much more worthy of a 35.00-49.99 price tag?(to me atleast) Games have been this price for a while now. This generation is no different. In-fact there was a point when games were even more expensive. Virtua Racing on Genesis cost near 90.00, and those N64 games? whew... 65.00 when they were first coming out. Some people feel game prices should be cheaper. They chew through games in a week or less, much like DVD's. The games are then either rented, or sold back / traded in. I know some gamers that buy and trade back every single game. They play them once with the intention of never playing them again. I can see why these people think buying a game for 14.99 is a miracle. I guess when it comes to games I see them entirely different. With the games I buy, not only do I intend to play through them more than once, but I will take an extra long time doing it as well. I like to take in and enjoy every facet of a game. I will probobly spend anywhere from 25 to 30 hours playing Metal Gear Solid 3. Why rush? Games by nature are longer and more involved than movies. A game being on average 10 times as long as a movie, doesn't warrent 10 times the price tag. However I do feel they are worth anywhere from 35.00-49.99 on release. Recently I bought Cold Winter on the Playstation 2. This game started at 49.99. 1 month passed and nationwide the game dropped to $19.99. 1 month???!??!?! How was that decided. Since movies are non-interactive, and games are interactive I feel games are worth a lot more than 14.99. And a game like MGS3 is DEFINATLY worth more than 14.99. This game should still be 49.99 and I wish it was set in stone for atleast 2 years after its release. This game is at the upper echelon of game development. It doesn't deserve to be in the bargain bin. I guess I feel myself and others are starting to question the "value" of a video game. More importantly I fear game companies might start decreasing the quality of their games. Causing them to be assembly line produced titles, rather that unique experiences like the MGS series. yea its great getting a game like "Project Snowblind" for only 9.95, but we are currently on the fringe. Thats a 35.99 game right there, that you got for 10 bucks. Down the road you will most likely be getting a 10 dollar game for 10 dollars. :/ Your probobly now asking, "But Nikon, why didn't you buy MGS3 at the full 49.99 when it was first released?" Well I have to order my games based on availability. If there is a game on Dreamcast that is out of print, and 100x harder to find than a game like MGS3, then MGS3 gets put on the back burner. I have a rigid heirarchy I follow with my 2buy list. However, in the end this past week I could have gone somewhere else and actually FOUND the game for $49.99. Yet I still opted to pay $14.99 over any other price point. I guess it is hard to turn down an offer when you are tight on money. Like I said above I wish certain games would get the full price treatment set in stone. Then I wouldn't even have a choice. |
|||
| _________________ The most effective, in this war? The Bydo have it... and they control it. |
||||
|
||||
 |
The MGS3 deal is understandable to me, since Subsistence will take over as the definite version of MGS3, but $14.99 is just mad. I'd would think that game would still retail for $49.99, THEN once Subsistence comes out, they mark the price down.
It seems like the rapid plummit in games is due to market saturation and demand for new products. For example, I took advantage of that Circuit City deal you cited. The majority of the games I saw and bought were in saturated genres such as street racers (Street Racing Syndicate), shooters (Chronicles of Riddick, Project: Snowblind) and sports (NFL/NBA 2K whatever). Some of these titles are a little old, and so they were thrown in the bargain bin to make room for the latest and greatest, which makes sence. A few, like Project: Snowblind, were newer products that didn't make waves in the market, and again, pushed aside for newer titles. But for these games to drop ALL the way down to $10 is just bonkers, especially for quality productions such as The Chronicles of Riddick. I'm concerned that if this trend continues, we will see sweat-shopped games made on a shoe string budget, as you said. -Mytho |
|||
| _________________ Need a copy of Twisted Metal Black Online? PM me! |
||||
|
||||
 |
Just another sign that the industry is going to crash again, SOON.
Personally, i cant wait.  |
|||
| _________________ COME TO SEGA SURGE!!! Sega Surge Sega Surge Fourms |
||||
|
||||
|
|
dwachill wrote:
Just another sign that the industry is going to crash again, SOON.
Personally, i cant wait. The industry is not going to crash. This is the tragedy. Instead it is morphing into something like this. In many ways, it already has. Where you have developers in the industry chopping the entire video game hobby into a marketing scheme. Enter Exhibit A. Getting back to the point of this thread, and tieing in what I have just said, the price drop in games will eventually mean what both Mytho and I have already said we fear. The decrease in price for video games, coupled with the mass market, will result in a decrease in length, quality, and originality. |
|||
| _________________ The most effective, in this war? The Bydo have it... and they control it. |
||||
|
||||
 |
games are dropping quite quickly now.,.. sport games especially are dropping to low prices quick... not like they used to. | |||
| _________________ Everyone needs Sorrow------------------- |
||||
|
||||
 |
This topic, along with rising game prices/development costs next generation, make me worried about gamers becoming entirely mass-market - with smaller independent studios being forced to close their doors because they can't afford to produce another offbeat yet awesome game because everyone bought Madden 20xx and Military Shooter instead.
The market is already over-satrurated as it is (coming from a GameCrazy employee). A lot of developers get assigned cookie-cutter games based off of the success of a new, inventive idea. But then they just run with it, and shit out title after title to make a quick buck. For a while it was WWII, then stealth, then street racing, now it's gritty urban. Then, you have games like Beyond Good and Evil, which are incredible, taking an inventive idea, and actually being, well, inventive with it. A game so good that fans are petitioning for a sequel over the protest of Ubisoft. A game that totally tanked because everyone bought Madden 20xx and Military Shooter/Illegal Street Racing Game instead. I really think the industry is moving in a very strenge direction, and I'm not sure if I like it. |
|||
|
||||
|
|
I am so glad you brought up Beyond Good & Evil. It was going to be in my next reply. (btw Madden had nothing to do with BG&E's lack of retail success...)
This game is probobly the worst victim of price slashing. Many people including myself see the game as one of the biggest tragedy's in gaming. The game's commercial downfall all happened because of Ubisoft's stupid marketing decision. They decided to release the game in the middle of the holiday season, at the exact same time Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released. So let me get this straight. Ubisoft decides to release a BRAND NEW intellectual property, in the middle of the Holiday season. A game from a leading innovative game designer, Michel Ancel, creator of the Rayman series. They release it right alongside Prince of Persia, one of the most anticipated releases for a series that has been around since 1989. It doesn't take a business mastermind to see what went wrong here. The sad thing is UbiSoft doesn't have the fucking BALLS to admit they screwed up, and ran one of the best new games this generation into the ground. Within a month after release, a World Wide price cut sent BG&E to the bargain bins. What is even crazier, this is when most gamers were actually able to get the game in the first place. During the holiday rush, people only have enough money to get a few games. With so many games coming out, how can anyone keep up? UbiSoft COULD have left this game at 50.00, and come febuary when people got more money, I bet sales would have started to surge. During the dryspell of spring / summer, this game would have started to sell like hotcakes. --- LUCKILY one could say BG&E2 lives on, and Michel Ancel is getting a second chance. He is working on the upcoming King Kong video game. Which if you look at the coverage and screenshots of this game, its got the play mechanics and art style from BG&E written all over it. In many respects I am starting to look at it as if its the spiritual successor to BG&E. The new King Kong movie is very high profile, and Michel Ancel is actually a GOOD game designer. So this will be one of the few movie to game adaptations that will knock people flat on their face. I'm just happy to see Michel get a second chance of making an epic action adventure game. Imagine how he and his team felt after BG&E got cut to 19.99 in January / Febuary of 2004. I wish I could email him and ask him about that. Years of hard work, and that is the thanks you get? I would have punched someone at UbiSoft in the face. --- However I will end this thread with an interesting food for thought question. With all of this talk about rehashes and sequals in the industry, do you think its actually GOOD that Beyond Good & Evil will stand on its own as single great game in history? Or would you have wished there had been a sequal? I have thought about this a lot. With the industry milking every franchise for all its worth, maybe it is sort of good that this game stayed on its own. Hmmm but its such a good game! I still can't decide. |
|||
| _________________ The most effective, in this war? The Bydo have it... and they control it. |
||||
|
||||
 |
A sequel to Beyond Good & Evil, frankly, would be a sort of test IMO. It would have a cult audience to follow it off from the beginning, but Ubisoft would have to have the perfect advertising scheme this time around to capture the typical gamer. I doubt it would be considered any sort of sequel 'rehash,' since that sort of term is something I would put for a series that did astoundingly well in sales, since developers would milk a franchise not because of its greatness, but because of how well it sold.
If a BG&E2 came into existence, it would certainly not be a bad thing. A game as good as this doesn't deserve to be left alone without a continuation of that innovation and inventing as Einhander put it. If tihs game is left on its own, it would be as if Ubisoft were to have said, "Oh, it didn't do so well in stores, so it doesn't need a sequel. Let's make another Tom-Clancy-branded game that we know will sell." ------------ You all bring up a lot of good points about game prices and costs, and, well...the only reason I'm as cheap as I am is not because I'm not willing to pay $49.99 in terms of value or interaction for something like MGS3. It's because I [i]have[i] to end up being that cheap, to grab games at $19.99, $14.99, $9.99, heck, even $4.99 sometimes. I definitely admire the developers and the amount of quality found in their games, of course, but I have minimal dollars I need to stretch. I'm one of those people who don't make money (yet), so I don't have much of a "gaming" budget to begin with. This, in turn, tells me: "I want to get the most value for my dollar or two." So, I wait. NBA Street Vol. 2 came out way, way back for $49.99 retail. I completely, desperately wanted to get ahold of it, so I ended up renting it for a week or so. Eight months later or something, the game goes Greatest Hits and I snag it for a mere $14.99 after coupon. (BTW, even if I tried to save up to $49.99 starting from its release date, it would've taken me eight months to do so in the first place.) Here's a thought, though: I'm not a mainstream person who will buy every version of Madden as soon as it comes out for $49.99. I just don't have that kind of money, so getting something like Project: Snowblind for $9.99 is one heck of a steal...well, saying it like that covers both bases - buying for the price alone and buying for the longevity and value of the game. Meh, I'm just a cheap guy. If I had $49.99 to spend for each game (AKA I won the lottery), I probably still wouldn't buy it until it dropped to a $20 range. Hmph.  |
|||
| _________________ Currently playing: N/A | My Games on IGN |
||||
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum