News "Games should cost £70 in the future"

Don't know about you, but one of the greatest things about purchasing a game was the box and all the extras it came with...

But unlike the old days, now there's not much there..

Still Having a CD is much easier to install than having to Friggin DL Empire:TW when you reformat.

I do wish the retail games would have all those extra packages...remember those HUGE manuals? Those 100+ pages of info on the game itself? Only CIV IV has gotten semi-close to this, the last great game with the huge manual was way too far back.


So I'm okay if it's that expensive, just give us all the extras of yesteryear, like the cool boxes, the nice charts, the maps, and the manuals with TONS of info.

 

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

 

this kind of thing is just pushing me further down the path of retro gaming - i recently replayed an old mega drive game (shining force 2) and to be honest, i enjoyed it more than most of the new games i have played recently. I realised that i really don't want what modern games are pushing - massive cinematic cutscenes, complete freedom of movement, photo-realistic graphics etc, I just want an entertaining game with a bit of a story that doesn't cost a fortune and doesn't take me days of dedicated effort to complete.

 

£70 is way too much, i don't remember last time i enjoyed a game as i used to long long time ago. I would pay £70 for games like Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights, simply games that give you 40+ hours of gameplay. But not for a rubbish we've seen recently with 10 hours or even less and the problem is with originality, most new releases i buy i put back on the shelf after few hours - simply not worth my time. And more and more i found myself going back and playing old games (hmm really great use of 4870x2). If they want to charge £70 for a game, i'm in but don't want to pay for voice acting by some famous actor, don't want to pay for very expensive PR campaigns and other crap, create a good game and you don't need any of these and your development costs will go considerably down .

I don't think that a gamer needs any of those. We just want to enjoy games, that's it.

 

I agree with Hexx. The real issue is value for the money spent. COD 4 lasted maybe 10 hours, and though fun while it lasted, I felt a bit ripped off at its amazingly short game experience. Give me a game like Fallout 3 though, and I'd pay willingly.

If developers want to successfully charge a higher price, they have to offer value, not whine about costs.

 

The only game I have recently purchased was L4D and that was after testing the "special" demo.
The price was reasonable and the game engine was good.

 

exactly! WTF are these people smoking. Get people from jails or the army and pay them $20 an hour.

 

If CoD4 only gives you 10 hours of gameplay, you're doing it wrong! The multiplayer is fantastic.

I think part of the problem is there is inconsistency, for example you can get CSS pretty cheap and I'm sure I've chalked up well over 100 hours on that. I think everyone also values money differently, and also that everyone values games differently. Some people spend a lot of their income happily on games whilst others find spending more than £10-£15 on a single game extortionate. Just speak to some peeps on the internet from Poland etc. and they say it's just impossible to afford games at western european prices which is why they have to pirate.

I don't think we should be afraid to pay more, at long as we are still getting value for money.

 

Dreaming... SubtleOne has a point - not everyone wants to play online shooters to get 'value'. I played Call of Duty 4 round a friends and it took me about six hours to complete the single player... multiplayer has never held that much interest for me, so for me CoD4 wasn't good value. For my friend, it was... he never even played the single player campaign.

 

Yea you're right paradigm, just for me the main draw of cod4 is the multiplayer . But I realise not everyone wants that, which makes it even harder for games publishers. Do you tell the devs to work on netcoding or an extra chapter for the single player? Do you tell them to do both but then pay them extra along with the delays and have to either sell the product for more or make less money (and so there's a chance your investors will sell your stock and buy your competitors stock, which is very very bad because you run out of money to make games).

It's all a difficult balancing act really.

 

Truly it depends on the game. STALKER CS had a great single player, but on mulitplayer it was....terrible to say the least.

And then there was Far Cry 2 which blew all over the place. It depends on the game Imo, RTSes will have devs making new maps and patches, FPS games: Patches for multi, RPGs: extra chapters, and MMOs: More farming places..

 

That is certainly true.

I would say that maybe devs should split single and multiplayer into two boxes (maybe make single player £15 and multiplayer £20)... the core would still be the same (textures, sounds, meshes, engine) but the single player bit would have some story and the multiplayer bit would have netcode.

Only problem is, if any developer did that, the publisher would probably want to charge £35 for each component. Which gets us back to the whole "£70 game" bit.

The other problem would be the games that have multiplayer or single player bolted on almost as an afterthought - which seems to be common in a lot of games now.

 

Its a bit daft really.

I have 4 points

1) I dont want to Britain to go to the euro, but it would be really interesting if it did. Would we still get quoted "bad echange rates"? would we still pay more for everything than everyone else?

2) I read recently that photoshop was the most pirated bit of software ever. The price might have something to do with this.

3) Sas anyone else noticed that the original COD4:MW keeps going upto £39.99 for a while than back down to £20. I am sorry but I WONT pay more than £30 and very rarely that. £25 is my "glass ceiling" really.

4) Maybe the devs should stop making too many mediocre games, and maybe just 1 good game per year. I recently bought a few games but only at £5 from Morrison's - DIRT, CIV4, Company of Heroes and Rollercoaster Tycoon3. Really enjoyed Dirt. Didn't enjoy CIV as much as the original and gave up. Quite like RT3, and not installed Company of Heroes yet (just not had time as of yet). My point being that £5 is chuck away money and if the games devs took the plunge at a low prive point I'm sure they'd be rewarded with massive sales. But then like someone said earlier they will most likely get massive sales from MW2 anyway even at £55 because people are sheep.

 

£70 my *ss. They only thing that should cost £70 is your head and I would gladly pay for it

 

I totally agree.. This is ridiculous at 70 quid.. i still think anything over 40 is too much

 

Greetings!

That works so well with St€am...

 

F that. No way I would be paying on average $110 USD for a game. In many respects games are a bit overpriced these days as it is. Nothing worse than spending $50 USD on a game only to bring it home and realize it sux monkey ballz.

If game prices truly ever came to that, I would stick to my already large catalog of games (many of which I like, but have not dedicated enough playing time to). Emulators and ROMs are also great for retro gaming. That is a surface I have barely scratched.

Modern graphics can be awesome, but gameplay on older games can make a big difference. I still know people that play D2 regularly even though the graphics are shite compared to something like Titan Quest. BTW - I like Titan Quest Immortal Throne better than D2 - LOD

 

$40AU is the most I would spend on a game and even that is pushing it.
If games are going that way then I wont be able to afford the hardware to run them.
Looks like my DS is going to get more usage in the future and my desktop is looking more like a door stop