What's with game prices?

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:40

Your IT - Entertainment

In fact, the complexity of many games makes them less attractive to the casual player. If I want a memory test, I can find one - but I don't want to be forced to learn a battery of keystrokes or button combinations before I can while away an idle half hour. Think about the popularity of the  Solitaire game that comes with Windows, and the way the motion-sensing Wii remote is proving so popular with players from primary schoolkids to their grandparents.

And as for games that require you to do a certain thing at just the right time, I was over that after playing Dragon's Lair just once. Too young to remember Dragon's Lair? It was, I think, the first coin-op game to use a laser disk. An animated clip played, and if you moved the controller in the right direction at the right time, you progressed to the next clip; if you didn't, you died. Yep, that was really going to get me to keep putting money in the slot! Requiring players to perform more complex sequences of actions in each situation doesn't make a game any more attractive.

Games publishers expect me to spend $A100-$A120 for most console games, or around $A20 less for the PC equivalents. A hundred bucks? I could go to the movies ten times for that, and each ticket would involve less risk that I wouldn't enjoy what I paid for.

Just how are these prices arrived at? Clearly, there's a 'tax' levied on developers and publishers by the console vendors - there's nothing new about that. The idea is that the hardware is sold at a loss, which is recovered through game royalties (and presumably online charges these days). It's a variation on the old 'give away the razor and sell the blades' strategy. So many games are linked to movies, TV shows, and professional sports, so there's an additional 'tax' levied for the use of the trademarks and other intellectual property.

I suspect there are two main factors driving prices. On one hand, designers (or more likely their beancounters) are thinking along the lines of "OK, there's probably 40 hours of play in this, so if we charge $80, that's only $2 per hour." Well maybe - but that only works if people actually want to play the games.

Secondly, each generation of hardware makes more demands on its games - if the console can fully render the background, then the software must take advantage of that ability, or be regarded as lacking. Such issues drive up development costs, but really they are only eye and ear candy. Playing Monopoly with a 1960s vintage set is no more or less fun than the Here & Now edition - it's the underlying game that matters. Costs and therefore prices are being pushed up, but the value proposition is deteriorating.

I might pay $19.95 for some of today's games, but $99.95? No way.