When you buy a PC game at a retail store...a portion of the cost goes to:

1) the retail store...in the form of a mark-up allowing them to pay employies, etc
2) the distribution channel...allowing them to pay truck drivers, etc..
3) the publisher...whom..in turn:
...a) pays royalties to the developers
......a1) whom also must deal with bug patches, etc..
...b) pays for game tech support services


Notice that the film and music industries have little need for tech support or bug fixes

Another thing to consider is video game shelf life...which is increadably short in comparison to both films (DVD and VHS) and music CDs.... this is because of two reasons:

1) the industry is basied on a volitile technology format base...every 4 years or so brings in a new console generation...every week brings in new PC games requireing ever higher minimum specs........comparied to the film and music industries where format changes are measured in decades....this meens that a given game must try to earn as much as possable, as quickly as it can, before it becomes "obsolite"

2) The number of games released every year drowns out older games when competeing for shelf space (PC games also have to compete with application software like Word, for shelf space)...thus a game that was released last month (that isn''t selling very well) may end up in the bargin bin this month, just to free up shelf space for future game releases.

Take a look at one of the local retailers...Basicly the only "old" games they usually have for sale are very popular ones released in the last 5 years or so....compare this to music and film selections...in which you can find copies of much older films/CDs...


With the film industry you have the movie theater side of things...as well as home VHS DVD sales...a film that makes little money in the theaters can still make enough back in video sales to pay for itself...this isn''t to mention merchandiseing sales of toys, books, even video games associated with a particular film....for a film to reach this level of market penitration it usually costs quite a large sum of money...if not in the film''s budgit, then in advertiseing and other forums of marketing...however there are many avenues for a film to recoup this initial investment.

With the music industry you have CD sales...as well as concerts, music videos, and countless other merchandiseing avenues (radio stations, etc..)

Video games simply don''t YET have that many well established secondary avenues of income (movie, book and toy deals are still pretty rare)...and thier rather volitile technology base prohibits a specific game from haveing a lasting widespread appeal....

Disclaimer: I havn''t read the whole thread, so someone else might have posted this.

I actually did some math when I first heard about the campaign for the minimum publishers can sell (console) games for, if they didn''t pay for marketing, support or stocking fees.

First of all, console manufactuers charge about £7 per unit sold. Add to this the £2 production costs (manuals, boxes, CDs, distrobution, warehouse space).

So, we have costs of £9 per unit. Now, let''s assume Game X had development costs of £2,000,000

OUr target is to break even. Of course, as the break even point depends on the numbers of units sold, we have to pick a target. 100,000 units isn''t exactly pessimistic (in reality), so let''s work out the minimum price per unit.

9 * 100,000 = 900,000
900,000 + 2,000,000 = 2,900,000
2,900,000 / 100,000 = £29 per unit

So no, console games aren''t over priced in the slightest. Now, if we''re realistic about this, the £40 retail outlets sell the titles for is actually a damned good price.

Of course, PC games don''t have the same per unit fees (only the production costs), so things are slightly different there. The only reason I can think of for the price of those is that publishers want to keep the console market alive, and charge comparable prices.

quote: Original post by GBGames
In one day I bought Daikatana, Railroad Tycoon 2 for Linux, and Myth 2 for Linxu each for $5-$7.

heh.. you bought daikatana....

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

''In C we had to code our own bugs. In C++ we can inherit them.''

Just thought I'd give my opinion on the indie developers like Dexterity :
Yeah, their games are cheaper but they emphasise gameplay not snazzy graphics - mostly puzzle type games. Developing a big blockbusting FPS needs huge amounts more work. The game engine may only take a few months to make but the artwork & level design can take years. To get an indie game looking that proffesional (art, levels, sound, music) you need probably at least 5 people more like 10 unless you have extremely rare multi-talented people who can code+compose+draw. So you have to split Dexterity's 1-10K per month in 5-10 pieces. So a sensisble maximum of about $1K per month per person - that's not a decent wage for a game developer. They take 65% of the money, but doing it all yourself with zero costs and assuming you could get the same sales with your own marketing - still only $3K a month. $36K a year isn't that much - bout the same as an introductory game coding job IIRC.
Plus I don't think people like Dexterity even want to challenge the big publishers with RTS/FPS/driving games; they want to corner smaller markets with less competition.


Read about my game, project #1
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John 3:16

[edited by - d000hg on October 14, 2002 6:43:55 AM]