The $60 Game Ceiling?
These days, when I'm not seething at Republican moosehunters, I'm counting my rapidly dwindling pennies. So I'm not surprised to see GameDaily's survey of gamers' financial concerns, nor to see the 43% who would rather wait to see current-gen game prices drop below $59.99 before they buy.
The results of the survey:
- 43% said theyʼd wait for next-gen game prices to drop
- 30% would buy more used games
- 23% would buy fewer games at $60 a pop
- 17% would rent more games rather than purchase them
- 17% said that for the right game, price would not matter
Notice that nearly a third of the respondents want used games and 17% want to rent - which isn't surprising as a gamer but does represent the kind of popular gradient the game industry is up against if it wants to make the case that renting or buying used gamers constitutes theft.
In fact, regarding TheDoctor's excellent piece on gaming as a global market, I wonder if that $60 price tag isn't just as much of an obstacle to mainstream "acceptance" of games as Croal's "procedural rhetoric," which to my ear sounds a bit too esoteric - I think a lot of folks are more turned off by a high price tag than they are overwhelmed by an incomplete theory-of-game or some other semiotic exercise.
Consumers Still Hesitating When it Comes to $59.99 'Next-Gen' Pricing [GameDaily]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany on 10 September 2008
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: $60 game ceiling, economy, money, pricing, survey
Hah! Try living in Australia. We've been used to paying $100 for games for years.
Surveys often skew data when it comes to price points as people are being asked the question in a somewhat abstract way. Put the price up and people will pay it.
@Liam: I completely disagree on your last point. Especially when you're a kid, the price of games is a HUGE barrier, and I'd argue most parents don't have the financial means AND lack of willpower to constantly cow to their kid's request for new games. Rentals and used games are a huge part of what keeps people in gaming. I remember as a kid that almost all of my gaming experiences came from rentals until about the time I was a teenager.
With regard to the article, I don't think the industry realizes how many people rely on rentals and used games to keep up with the hobby. The problem is that many of the major publishers seem to assume that they'll keep the same number of players if they remove the ability to rent or buy used. I'd argue more that many of the primary consumers of used and rental games would simply stop playing altogether.
"...if it wants to make the case that renting or buying used gamers constitutes theft"
How about I make the case that the price disparity between foreign markets combined with region restrictions constitutes profiteering.
I bought a classic controller for my Wii when i was in Japan earlier this year. All hardware/accessories there are literally half the cost we pay in Australia. I remember when the N64 first came out the original "Extreme G" racing game was retailing for $149.
There is no excuse for that kind of bullshit.
You Aussies have had it by far the worst in terms of customer service and prices for years, but ridiculous overpricing is nothing new to us in the UK either.
Extreme-G was £69.99 and ISS64 was £59.99 when released here, that's $140 in green money.
Things are a tiny bit better now, games are £40 or £50 for consoles, all of the new proper games are anyway. Production costs don't factor in as the games are finished by the time they reach America, localisation doesn't matter to our countries as again it's all but finished by the time it hits the US, English is their language and obviously ours and yours.
Megadrive games were regularly in the high £50 area so it's nothing new in the UK and I would imagine Australia had it worse if not equal.
Shipping costs aren't a factor either, as it's taken care of as a supplementary away from game costs, and even if it does it's $0.05 per copy of the game shipped, inconsequential in my opinion.
It's an excuse to screw over the generally more affluent individual nations, US is at any given time either just ahead of the Eurozone or just behind it depending on the economies. It's easier to overcharge the Euros as we're independent countries under one banner as a general rule. It's more difficult in the US as it's one county with a huge amount of buyer power, We Euros spend so much time disagreeing with each other, we'd rather keep bickering childishly than give ourselves a fair crack at dealing with price fixing.
Australia is out of the way, out of sight out of mind, if they want games at a fair price, damn well import them or something I would imagine is their attitude.
It's not just games, they recently cut the price of the EEEpc 1000 in America but ruled out a UK cut to $275 or £150, and in the UK it's £349.99 or $680, that's nearly 250% more, and it isn't like it's an individual case either.
It makes me sad as a consumer.