quote: Original post by GBGames

Original post by Anonymous Poster
And the point about movies you can''t compare them because when they get out to the consumer to buy they have allready made most of their money in the theatre and movie stores and merchentising so they can be cheap (compare it to a game that has allready been out for a year, it has allready made most of it''s money so it''s price drops).

I think I can make the point about movies.
It costs $8 at my local theater to see any movie there, whether new or out for a few weeks.

A new game out for a year is still $30 at least. Not all movies have merchandising arrangements. They still cost $8.


I think the point about movies vs. games is that the potential audience for a movie is hundreds of times bigger than that of a game. Games have a potential audience of millions, low tens of millions if they are lucky. Movies on the other hand have a potential audience of hundreds of millions, if not the low thousands of millions.

Leaving merchandising out of it, because so many ''units'' of movies are ''sold'', they can be cheaper per unit. Because so few units of games are siold, they have to be more expensive.

And GBGames, I''m sorry if my earlier post sonded like arant against what you said, it wasn''t intended to be, it was my frustration at the finacial black holes in the industry, so my apologies if I sounded a bit harsh back there.

Anyway, on a more positive note,.... :-) I think if we care at all about prices of games, we should do well to support guys like Steve Pavlina at Dexterity. I have absolutely no affiliation with him or his company at all by the way. I just feel that what he and guys like him are doing is going to be the future for high quality innovative gaming, as opposed to the mass-produced clones you get from the ''studio'' system.

Look at what the guys who made Combat Mission achieved, for example. VGA PLanets 4 is another good example.

The mod scene is another area of the industry that always gives me hope. Talented people working together for free, creating quality stuff for people, for free. Don''t want to pay $40 for a game? You know what to do.....

I think it is kind of hard to understand how an industry can claim that it can justify $50-$60 for games in order to pay its expenses when movies can be so much cheaper, even when put directly to video instead of a stint in theaters.

I know that games pay your salary. Does this mean that movie makers and such are starving in the streets?

Does it mean that I should pay so much for a game? If games were $200 each, would the current "small" market be smaller or no?

I think NeoGeo showed that there can be little to no market for games that are too expensive.
Super NES games were $65 at one point. Final Fantasy 3 (or whatever its real number was) was $75, even after a year if you tried to order it direct from Square.
Somehow someone has to explain how games have become more lucrative now that they sell for $40-$50. Is the market just bigger now? Did it get less costly to produce?
If so, was there a spike in production costs during the SNES era?

Fair Play showed that games can sell for even $10 and still make a profit for everyone. I think it is a bit idealistic because you have to sell over a million copies of the game to do so, but then again, with the price that low, wouldn''t games then be impulse purchases? Buy more than one game a time? I think a million copies sold is reasonable then.

No, I have not worked in the industry. I am just a hobbyist at this point. Still, people need to stop getting mad at Fair Play and simply point out to them exactly why it is not feasible to sell games for less than $50. The arguments that they are refuting don''t make sense, but then again it could be sensationalized and real simplified. Can someone give solid evidence of this?
What is Fair Play not telling us, if you think that games are not too expensive or in fact they are too cheap?

quote: Original post by GBGames
I think it is kind of hard to understand how an industry can claim that it can justify $50-$60 for games in order to pay its expenses when movies can be so much cheaper, even when put directly to video instead of a stint in theaters.

Movies sell in far greater quantities, therefore price is cheaper. Movies go straight to video when there is no hope of distribution in cinemas, so they go for video to try to recoup something, but they know full well they won''t get their money back. Likewise, games sell in far fewer quantities, therefore price is higher. Games go straight to bargain/discount prices when they are so bad that retail will not stock them at full price because they know they won''t sell any, and/or when publishers don''t stump up the placement cash to purchase shelf space in retail outlets because they know they won''t recoup their money.

quote:
I know that games pay your salary. Does this mean that movie makers and such are starving in the streets?

You''d be surprised. A friend of mine who is a top-paid & highly sought after film editor earned just £6,000 in the last 18 months. Most scripts don''t get bought or optioned, and of the ones bought, most don''t get made. Of the ones made, most don''t break even. The movie industry, like the games industry, relies on a few hit products to generate enough profits to pay for the others that didn''t. Would I encourage my sons or daughters to go into either the movie industry or the games industry? NO. Both are highly unstable industries. Where else do you get laid off once or twice a year?

quote:
Does it mean that I should pay so much for a game? If games were $200 each, would the current "small" market be smaller or no?

The problem is not that the market is small, but that it is fragmented. If I make a film I can distribute it through cinemas, on video, on dvd, on television... and it will probably get repeat revenue for years to come on tv.

A game on the other hand will only sell to a niche market or a series of niche markets if I spend money (a lot of money) to convert it from PC to PS2, or to develop for both platforms from the outset (also very expensive - there are no cheap options in game development) and has a retail shelf life of only 3 to 4 months (only the top few percent of all games stay on the shelves for longer than this). You just have to look at the statistics to see this. You''ll have to pay to look at the statistics though, they are not freely available. I have worked in publishing and development and have had access to the figures. Most game sales are in the first 6 to 8 weeks, and they tail off pretty dramatically after that. So you spend $1,000,000 making a pretty cheap and average-looking game for PC and Xbox that wasn''t based on any license (so at least you or your publisher didn''t have to shell out a million or two for the privilege of naming and branding your game), and your publisher is pretty bad so only spends $100,000 on advertising and promotion, so your game has only a few magazine adverts, the PR people in the reviews don''t get taken out to lunch so they don''t give you a very good review (you think I''m joking?) and you don''t buy much shelf space in the retailers and you definitely don''t buy the prestigious window shelves or shelves near the front of the shop or the promotional shelves. So how many units are you going to sell? Probably only between 10,000 and 30,000. How much is $40 times 10,000? This is without your retailer deciding to drop the price of your game after only three weeks of release, because its not selling fast enough and they want to clear the shelf space to sell for the next game coming along so they can pocket more money... but you''ll notice that the retailers are not getting so rich either, as anyone working in that industry will tell you, its the publishers who call the shots, they take the risks, they pocket the cash.

As developer, after your publishers pay off the retail costs, shipping costs, warehouse costs, distribution costs, manufacturing costs, etc etc etc you received approx $7 per unit towards paying off the development costs that they advanced you so you could make the game for them. If you are lucky, you made enough of those $7 to encourage the publisher to consider giving you another contract.

quote:
I think NeoGeo showed that there can be little to no market for games that are too expensive.
Super NES games were $65 at one point. Final Fantasy 3 (or whatever its real number was) was $75, even after a year if you tried to order it direct from Square.
Somehow someone has to explain how games have become more lucrative now that they sell for $40-$50. Is the market just bigger now? Did it get less costly to produce?
If so, was there a spike in production costs during the SNES era?

Yes the market has bigger niches now. Last time I looked, there were enough PS2s sold to justify making games for that console. But for quite a while there were only a few million Xbox sold, so publishers and developers weren''t seeing any money there. Luckily they stuck with it as it is relatively easy to port from PC to Xbox, and eventually sales grew and Xbox looks lucrative.

What will really bake your noodle though, is that a long time before the release of PS2, publishers stopped commissioning games for PS1. This never made sense to me, as just before PS2 came out the PS1 market was the biggest it had ever been, there were tens of millions of consoles to sell to, and the games were mostly going to be compatible with PS2. But publishers didn''t want to know, they decided that people wouldn''t want to buy PS1 games any more, so they stopped paying developers to make them, with a (very) few honourable exceptions.

quote:
Fair Play showed that games can sell for even $10 and still make a profit for everyone. I think it is a bit idealistic because you have to sell over a million copies of the game to do so, but then again, with the price that low, wouldn''t games then be impulse purchases? Buy more than one game a time? I think a million copies sold is reasonable then.

Can you list me 20 games that have sold over a million copies? Even at $10? Are there any retailers that would stock a $10 price point when there are hundreds of $40 price point games paying more money to get on the shelves?

It would be great if this were true, but the public associate price with value. When you walk into a shop do you view the $10 games and the $40 games the same? Retail conditions us to see cheaper games as yesterdays games, and to expect the new releases to be the higher prices.

quote:
No, I have not worked in the industry. I am just a hobbyist at this point. Still, people need to stop getting mad at Fair Play and simply point out to them exactly why it is not feasible to sell games for less than $50. The arguments that they are refuting don''t make sense, but then again it could be sensationalized and real simplified. Can someone give solid evidence of this?
What is Fair Play not telling us, if you think that games are not too expensive or in fact they are too cheap?

I don''t think it''s unfeasible to sell games for less than $50, but we have to be clear about how we will do this. $10 games sold on the internet? Yes, because you can cut a lot of publisher and advertiser and distributor costs. $10 games in the shops? No, because it won''t cover your costs. If games sold at $10, publishers and developers would have to scale down their production costs by 80%. So that would mean a lot less game, a lot less sales, a lot less people buying consoles, a smaller market.

If publishers thought they could make more money by selling more games at $10 rather than less games at $40, believe me they would have already done so. But there are good financial reasons why budget publisher brands like Sold Out and White Label etc are the ones selling old games at low prices, while the big boys sell new games at high prices.

First off, going to the movies for the average joe costs more then $8. It''s pretty common knowledge that Movie Theatres make their money off $15 purchases of food. That''s close to $25 to see a movie rather then $8. Not to mention you get to see the movie for 2hours. It''s a one time deal. Some people go twice.

Second to own a movie usually 4-8 months after release costs about $20. Maybe $20-$30 on DVD. A video game 6 months old is usually down to $20 or less.

Third, most movies have a much larger audience then most games. Halo made it big when it sold over 1 million copies! That''s about 25 Million in revenues for the publisher. (After 50% is taken by retail stores) In contrast (this information is taken straight from Yahoo!''s box office list) Sweet Home Alabama brought in $35,648,740 in one weekend. This dosen''t include what they will continue to make, or video/dvd sales etc.

Finally, if anyone wants to pay $4 an hour to play video games for the first 6 months after release, talk to microsoft.

Michael Sikora
www.GuardianLightStudios.com

quote: Original post by GBGames

Original post by Anonymous Poster
I think I can make the point about movies.
It costs $8 at my local theater to see any movie there, whether new or out for a few weeks.

A new game out for a year is still $30 at least. Not all movies have merchandising arrangements. They still cost $8.

As others said, a movie has a much larger audience. You get whole families going to see movies.

But besides that, you want to see that movie…$8. Oh, you want to see it with your little brother? That will be another $8. What''s that? You liked the movie so much you want to see it again? That''s another $8. With a game, you pay your cash and you play as many times as you want, with your brother and all your friends too.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Taking Puzzle Games to A Whole New Dimension

"It would be great if this were true, but the public associate price with value. When you walk into a shop do you view the $10 games and the $40 games the same?"

Hell no.
I always look at the $10-$20 games first. I buy quite a few of
those. Much less risk. I will rarely EVER anymore buy a game
at $40-$50($60 is right out). I read reviews and hear from
friends before I shell out that kind of dough. I''m just yer
average citizen currently making a bit above minimum. These
prices are too high.

I can''t verify for everyone else, but I''ll take a chance on a $20
game. This is why I haven''t bought any of the post-dreamcast
consoles. The game prices are ludicrous. $50 at the store for
ANY game that''s come out in the last year, $30-$40 for two years
(excluding big-name titles), and $20 for a mediocre launch title.

I see all this complaint about how the number of people who buy
games is relatively low. Well, duh. The prices are $50.
You put them at a ''saved my allowance and lunch money for a week''
price for a year and even bad games will sell(look at the Deer
Hunter series). The game companies we should be protesting are
the big-name ones like EA. They need to reverse the trend.

-Hyatus
"da da da"

People arent willing to take a risk at current prices, they stick with the same old stuff, atleast they know what there getting for there money.

Chances are if you reduce the cost, people will still spend the same amount of money, theyd just be prepared to take risks with other types of games, so the publishers dont really loose out. So at worst theres little change and at best, maybee it will encourage people who thought gaming was to expensive. Just look what happend when sony started that platinum range thing, the games mostly sold more than they did at the origanl price, which shows people are willing to take risks with new games at lower costs. It would actually be more healthy for the industry, publishers wouldnt see creative games as so much of a risk, maybee it would stop the huge numbers of small developers going bust.


However i think there aims of such low prices are not realistic there are still many hidden costs they fail to mention, not least the fact that consoles are sold massivly below there cost to produce/develop and thats why console makers make the money back from a proportion of game sales.

I swear I'm gonna beat the crap out of you with my mouse.

Do you guys even know how the industry works?? Do you know what pbulcihers pay for ads/shelve space? And if you defend less money on this, then how will the game sell? Do you think the average joe will know of Quake 8392749832742389 if he doesn't see it in magazines, tv, internet sites, whatever? Just because you don't have a life and know the exact release dates of every game from today till 5 of September 2052, most people don't. They don't know when its out, what is out or how much it costs.

And do you know the freaking ammoount developers spend on developing? What pisses me off is that you get people complaining about games not having 32897429387 hours of FMV, super realistic graphics, etc etc, but noooooooo still you think games should have this and cost a thousand bucks to develop.

I used to buy spectrum games at about 1.5 bucks. You know what, I would buy most of those games instead of the ones in the market now, but 99.999999999999% of the people wouldn't. If it doesn't have per pixel super palletized triple hyper imposed anti alising (tm) techniques, people won't buy it. Marketing people spend thousands of millions to discover what to put on game boxes that will make the average joe buy that game instead of the other, and you know what, jargon sells. And more and more you see stuff like "With fantastic enviroments with perfect looking lighting" or similiar, thats what the public wants, and it cost a lot ot make.

If those idiots are so smart as to plan games to be sold at 10 bucks and make a profit.. why dont they make games?? Those idiots are so smart that apparently they know better than thousands of researchers with degrees in marketing and sales on how to run development more efficently. 1 out of 10 big games that come out dont have a fu**ing profit you idiots! ONE OUT OF TEN. how the hell will developers have a profit selling their games at 10 bucks???


And bout comparing music/movies to games..... argh don't make me start. Come on, every one of you have that freaking idiot girl in your family or cirlce of friends that saw Titanic 34 times in the first week. Or the idiot kid that saw the matrix 12 times in a day, bought the toys, posters, and fake autographs of keanu. When was the last time you bought two copies of the same game, or even better, when did your entire family bought the same game for themselves, so they would all play? Movies customers outsell game customers in more than a 1000 to 1 ratio, then there are TV licensing of the movies, then VHS/DVD distribution. Music cds cost less shelve space, and have a customer ratio to games of about 500:1, taking in considerationt that manufacturing price of a cd compared to a game is 2-3 times less, you can see why it remains in business.

Developers/publishers give the average costumer what he wants. Sure a game can cost 5 more bucks cause it has a 100 pages color manual, but thats what the average costumer wants. Not what you fraking no life game devouring freaks want. You think because you don't read manuals, noone does. 95% of costumers do. Shall we make games cheaper 5 bucks and not include that 100 pages manual so 5% of the people will be more happy? and then lose 95% of the other clients? Screw you idiots.

And lets not forget Tech Support costs. If you idiots have old drivers for your cards, and the game crashes, you do you waste hours on email/phone support? It sure isnt the movie company or your grandma.

Oh btw, cars are too pricy, lets boycott them. Food is too pricy, lets boycott them. Lollypops are too pricy, lets boycott them. You can't afford it, you don't buy it idiots.


About Fair Play, just because they wasted all their money in mind altering drugs (hey come on, for what they said, it couldn't be anything else) and don't have moeny to play the new games, don't try to pretend you hold the thruth. You know squat about whats behind the scenes. You go to a store, buy a game (if ur sober enought to) and then complain u paid 50 bucks for a game where the only thing you can image is that it could just cost 10 bucks (except u forget about 90% of the costs involved in a game).

Game Companies go down every freaking day, do you really think you have the solution to this industry ???




ps. sorry for the tone, but idiots like this piss me off..


[edited by - Akura on October 4, 2002 5:44:00 AM]

*points to well known price elasticity of demand models*