I'm seven years behind the current generation. I'm only, just now, getting to playing Metal Gear Solid. The first one. I feel so out of touch. Still, I never have to pay high prices, though.

Okay, while the OP has pretty much lost all credibility because of his other opinions, I do agree that $60 for a disc-based game is a ripoff and one of the reasons I'm holding off on this gen.

Yes, I paid $60 for some games on the Genesis, but they weren't all that expensive (although some were even worse). But they were also cartridges and were more expensive to manufacture. That is not to say I wouldn't pay $60 for a game anymore, but it would have to be a damn good game. If I do get into this gen, I will not be buying many games for this reason. The extra $10 this gen is the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

I am gone all weekend, and I miss this awesome thread. Playing an HD console on a 20+ year old 13" TV and saying it looks as good as HD-DVD/Blu-ray... rotfl rotfl rotfl

Are you using an RF adapter too?

I hope you realize that the reason the picture "quality" appears to be so good is purely artificial because of the puny size of the TV. If you were to expand the size to normal dimensions, it would not look nearly as good.

I have to wonder why if you have a 57" TV (and another 32" in the bedroom) you would even bother with the old ass TV? :hscratch:

Yep. It is what I do. I don't care about HD movies; DVDs are good enough for me. So I use my 27" SDTV for movies, and my 19" widescreen monitor for 360 gaming.

well, i only have a 15" monitor. I'd rather have played on my 35" SD than a 15" monitor


but i have a 47" LCD so its not an issue anymore

Sorry bub, your making a lot of assumptions. I DO have broadband, I DO play games online. I merely referenced the dial-up to make the point that there are a lot of people out there that enjoy playing games that either cannot, or do not want to play deathmatch or MMORPG's etc..

I have let my Gold account lapse since my personal experience with Live has been disappointing. I refuse to pay for the map packs so I can't get into a lot of GOW games and Burnout is just plain laggy. I do, however like downloading demos. I still play online with my PC and use the online features of the Wii almost daily though.

Regardless, I don't base the value of a game on multi-player only content of primarily single player games (any shooter or driving game). I wouldn't judge Shadowrun by the same criteria as I have for GoW since the entire concept of Shadowrun is online multi-player.

The big danger here (as another poster alluded to) is that publishers of crap games are also putting there stuff out there for $50-60. And that's bad news for everyone, because people who don't have common sense will buy them....next thing you know...there will be a thread about $75 price points...and so on....

in my experiences, I'd judge GoW and Shadowrun under the same criteria. Gears is utterly worthless offline to me

Yes, you spent money on sequels, continuations of the story. What you didn't buy was Deathly Hallows and then "bonus" chapters made available to you for a small fee that were not incorporated into the original book. When you purchased the book, you purchased it knowing that you were getting the FULL work and not just a partial piece, and that if, in the small chance, something were to be added to the book later, surely it would be free of charge as you purchased your product with the assurance that you were getting a full and finished item.

The same goes for Star Gate. You purchased complete seasons that will slowly allow you to compile a complete series. How would you feel if two years after you get the COMPLETE (Complete meaning every single last episode made in the entire show.) series they release never before seen episodes on new dvds. That alone makes what you purchased incomplete and therefore they are going against what they printed saying you were purchasing the complete seasons/series. Wouldn't you be a little tiffed at them for misleading you by saying you were getting a complete season when in fact you were only getting partial content and now being charged for the fully finished product after the fact?

I can't help but feel that the price tag of $60 dollars was put on the product to cover production cost AND future DLC. There was mention made that there might be future content for the game before it was even released. Nothing was said that it would be made available for a small fee. Of course nothing was said that they wouldn't charge, but still. It was just said that future downloads would be available. They never mentioned a monetary sum. So taking that into account. The everyday gamer, like you and I, can only assume that by making it known before hand that there would be future content available and that there was no mention of a price, that the content would be free to us when released.

Charing for new maps and game types is like charging for patches and security updates and expecting users to buy them because there was a demand for it. When a company releases these updates they don't charge for them, why? Because they are saying "hey you purchased a full and complete game. These faults prevent it from being such so here, we are fixing it free of charge". I feel the same goes for when they release extra maps and content. The act of releasing the new maps voids out the fact that you bought a complete game because without this new content you now have an incomplete product.

I feel though that we are going on a tangent that has left the original subject matter. Really, the price of a game and its worth is subjective only to the one purchasing the game. They deem, in the end, whether or not the product is worth their money or not. For the most part I feel that what I have gotten out of my games is worth the $60 dollar tag attached to them. 90% of the games I own have made DLC free of charge and I greatly appreciate that. It breaths new life into the game and really makes me feel like I am getting my money out of my purchase. I will gladly fork over $60 for a game I KNOW is going to be good. Of course that involves me doing research on the game, maybe renting it first or playing it at a friends house to help become a more informed buyer.

Well, if you look at it that way, would you buy Gow if it was just the online component as it shipped (no extra maps) for $60.

now, no

when it was released, that's basically what I did. I even went out and grabbed some points so I could grab the maps early.

for shadowrun, I waited till i could get the game around 30 bucks. I knew it was no where near as popular as gears and it would drop

Didn't they just do this with Babylon 5?

I was thinking the same thing myself! :lol:

For those that think these will lead to $70 games, you're right.

Just like we now have $300-600 consoles. And $50 controllers. And 6 different SKUs for one system.

If it gets too expensive, it'll tank (see PS3) and if people can still afford it, it'll stick right there.

Games were right around the $50 price point for most of my 30 years of life, and yes I had a friend that paid $85 for Strider on the Genesis. The fact that they finally officially jumped up $10 isn't going to break the bank. I think it will be awhile before they go any higher.

I know one of the advantages to a console is lower cost compared to a PC. However, I can honestly say as a PC gamer I never spend over $20 for a title. Sure I might have to wait for a coupon, or a Google checkout promotion, or a day after Thanksgiving sale on Amazon, or an announcement on cheapassgamer. But I absolutely, positively never spend over $20 on a title before adding tax and shipping. And these are for new current generation games - FEAR, STALKER, Supreme Commander, etc, etc. Just compare prices for Rainbow Six Vegas on Amazon right now - $59.99 for PS3 or $19.99 for PC.

I'm not sure if there are similar deals to be found in console gaming. But I think the money I save on software makes up for a higher-priced rig. I heartily agree with the OP - I would never spend $60 on a game.

The reason PC game prices drop so much more rapidly is because there are fewer PC gamers relative to console gamers. Halo, GTA, etc will sell well for a year straight with no price dropped needed to fuel the demand. A good PC game will sell for a month or two, then drop off the radar completely unless the price drops to get the demand back up.

You DO spend $60 on a game... it just isn't attached to the game itself. It is built in to the expense of a gaming rig. Spend $300-$500 on a PC capable of next-gen gaming and then let's talk about game prices. Over the course of 12-18 months, my pc-gaming friends spend as much on upgrading their graphics cards as I spent on my 360 console.

Then they whine and complain about driver glitches and game bugs.

I'd rather pay $60 for a game and know that it will work, or at least if there is a bug it will universally affect all, than to spend $20 on a PC game and then spend an evening trying to get the game to work because a new driver or graphics card is required.... or that there is perhaps some other system-specific issue that prevents the game from running.

PC gaming is certainly expensive. A 2 year old videocard (even top of the line at purchase) just isn't going to cut it. That's why I decided to forget PC gaming and go console exclusive. PC gamers have almost as much fun getting 165fps in the latest game as playing it. :D

PC gaming is not that expensive. I've been running a $120 x850xt for about a year and a half now, and before that I used a $40 x800 card I ran for a year. Before that I used a 9800pro for $160 that lasted me almost 3 years.

The folks that are spending uber bucks are trying to run games at native rez on huge LCDs. I guarantee you I'll be running Quake Wars on my x850xt and socket 754 rig (first Athlon 64 socket) this October. And including some mini-upgrades I did (and selling old parts) I've probably spent under $600 on it total in the past 4 years.

I might be running Quake Wars not at 1920x1200 like I like to run Civ 4 and Unreal Tourney 2004, but perhaps 1440x900 or 1600x1024.

Video card expenditures only cost you if you're trying to play ultra high rez and high AA. A smart ~$200ish video card purchase is normally good for 2-3 years, and lately I've been doing more like $150.

And by the way: no crashes, no glitches, no problems. In fact, I'd say it's more stable for games than my Xbox360 is. The only problem I hit in years was a copy protection (Safedisk) problem with Civ4: Beyond the Sword. Stupid copy protection.

Well, I'll admit I spent around $1,000 on my last machine. (And that was after building it myself to save money.) But the way I see it is this - I spent about $500 more than a console. If I pay a difference in $40 per game title, I basically break even after about 12 games. So if I'm going to buy at least that many games for this generation (which I'm sure I have already), it becomes a matter of personal preference whether I would want to do my gaming on a console or a PC.

Now - if you add to the fact that these days everyone needs a PC, it becomes a no-brainer for me. Do I want to buy a cheap $500 PC and a $500 console, or spend $1,000 on a PC that does both?

There are people here complaining that a game like Madden comes out every year and you have to buy a full new game when all that was needed was an update. Then you have people complaining that games come out that get small, paid updates instead of releasing them as full fledged special editions or sequels.

The DLC stuff is a slippery slope... how much was left out of the original game to milk the gaming public? But they also run the risk of ticking off the customer base who won't buy the game at all because of the lack of initial content. I think the GOW thing works well, if you want the map packs for free, you'll get them eventually. I'm much less forgiving about something like Guitar Hero, or the whole EA interview about this stuff.

As far as the DVD analogy... this is usually much, much worse. You'll buy the original version of a DVD, then they'll release a special director's cut edition with exclusive material.

As for the whole 13 inch tv... I agree, if you're playing on a 13 inch tv, $60 games are not worth it.

To those who are mentioning the sometimes higher cost back in the day for cartridge games, how much did it cost to manufacture a cartridge compared to a disc? Higher?

According to Wikipedia: N64 cart = $3.50 cost to make, PS disc = $0.10.

Source.

What about a BluRay disc, though?

I thought it was mainly the premium that first party companies like Nintendo charged the 3rd party companies to make the cartridges that was the main cost.

Blu-rays cost more, but Sony is subsidizing their manufacture.

In the last few posts, I hope nobody's trying to justify certain types of costs with prices.

First of all, prices don't need to be justified in this manner. If a publisher has a game we're more than happy to spend $60 on, what difference does it make whether they ran a stunningly efficient, talented operation or a bloated, poorly-run one behind the scenes?

And second, there's zero point breaking out the costs of the direct, physical goods of a cartridge vs disc when we all know every other development cost has shot through the roof to absolutely ridiculous levels (example: $30 million for Stranglehold?!?).

After re-reading the last few posts, it looks like I may have read more into an innocent, inquisitive question than was actually there.

The previously-linked source understates cartridge costs, though. I distinctly remember a $35 figure as the cost of each N64 cartridge produced, but this may have included everything, including Nintendo's licensing fees. Backing this up, in another wikipedia location, there was this...

"The cost of producing an N64 cartridge was far higher than producing a CD: one gaming magazine at the time cited average costs of twenty-five dollars per cartridge, versus 10 cents per CD."

So I think this says more about the quality of wikipedia info than anything.

I'm sure one could google up a link to a more direct, authoritive page on the subject, if so desired.

Might not be Wiki's fault -- as they could both be cited with sources that have 2 different figures.

Still kicking myself for spending $70 on Super Return of the Jedi...

Rising costs of development (longer dev time, salaries, etc) - it happens. For the hrs you can get out of a game, it can be worth it. You just have to pick and choose, or wait for a price drop.