Tracer Bullet

Right, except that the $60 price point was decided on by Microsoft, not game developers. They seem to have been doing okay at $50. Microsoft never turned a profit on the original Xbox, and the higher licensing fee was one of their attempts to change that with the 360.

kgrogers1979

You do realize if that was true then only Microsoft published games would have increased to $60, right? Instead all games increased. Its not like Microsoft has any say in the price of a Sony or Nintendo or Capcom or Squaresoft or Bioware or any other company's games. It was a universal decision, not just Microsoft.

mhg83

What about Nintendo? All of their games 1st and 3rd party games are priced at $50.

Groucho

And they're all in glorious 480p.

MoviePage

There are some who think that, and there are those who aren't living in fantasyland.

Tracer Bullet

Microsoft in effect forced the price increase because they demanded a higher licensing fee. It's not complicated.

kgrogers1979

No, they didn't. If it was only Microsoft, then why are games also $60 on the Playstation? Lower licensing fees would have kept the price lower. On PCs, there are no licensing fees, and some PC games do release with a $50 or lower price tag, but not always. Some PC games are $60 even without a licensing fee. Its up to each individual publisher to set their own prices.

Tracer Bullet

Games are $60 for the PS3 because it came out a year after the Xbox, Sony saw Microsoft got away with it, and they wanted some of that.

"Some" PC games are $50? Try almost all of them.

glassdragon

I don't know about that. Can you imagine how much more popular the ps3 would be and how many millions more systems and games they would have sold if they had gone with a 50 dollar price point? It would have either forced MS to change or no one would think twice about what system to buy cross platform games on. I think I'm going to have to go with developers raising the prices because of the increased development costs for the games. Do you seriously think that Uncharted 3 cost the same to make as Super Mario Brothers did?

Game development budgets are sometimes in the price range of Hollywood movies, they kind of had to I think. Of course this all goes to point that people keep buying the games for 60 dollars so what reason do they have to charge less?

PopcornTreeCt

Um... $50 or $60 makes absolute zero difference to me and I doubt it would to most gamers. $40 is the price point where I might (and I mean might) buy something I would normally rent.

Probably just me but everything being the same except PS3 games are $50 and 360 games are $60... I'm still buying them for 360.

Michael Corvin

You just aren't getting it and actually have it backwards. When the 360 launched and for about 18 months MS published games were $50. They made it very clear that all third party games would be $60 for licensing fees. ALL. Third parties had no say in the matter. If Capcom wanted to make a game it would be $60. Square? $60. SEGA? $60. Kameo, Viva Pinata & Perfect Dark? $50 because there were no licensing fees. MS was the ONLY company involved in deciding the price of games. I think the first MS published title to garner the $60 price was Halo 3. It had nothing to do with inflation.

Also, as mentioned, Sony just followed suit and Nintendo didn't think they could get away with it having an SD system.

Matthew Chmiel

Uh....

Haaaaave you met my friend Steam?

fumanstan

It's pretty obvious the discussion is around MSRP, in which games are still full priced at release on Steam.

kgrogers1979

Yes. Both Skyrim and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 are $60 right now on Steam. Brand new games still retail for $60 on Steam. If games are $60 because of licensing fees, then why are they $60 on PC when there are no licensing fees at all...

Development costs have increased exponentially over the years. Like someone else said, they rival the development costs of a big budget film nowadays. The number of people it takes to even develop a game has also increased dramatically. It took three people to program Pac-Man. Nowadays the credits at the end of a game looks like the credits at the end of a movie, nearly endless with hundreds and hundreds of people listed as having worked on it.

So development costs have increased and the price of a game has remained a constant $50 for two decades, which in effect means that the price of games has been decreasing due to inflation). Yet despite that the companies never bothered to raise the price until Microsoft decides to raise the licensing fee which is pocket change compared to how much development costs have increased. Sorry, it just sounds way too much like anti-Microsoft propaganda written by someone living in their parents' basement.

Tracer Bullet

It took like four years after the $60 console MSRP for $60 games to start showing up on PC, and there was a lot of complaining about it. Most PC games still release with a $50 MSRP. I paid $50 for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Groucho

Yeah, I was pretty surprised to see Kingdom of Amular for $60 on Steam.

fujishig

There's also the thinking that if you price a product lower than a similar competitor, you'll be branded as inferior or budget priced. And Sony was all about making you get a second job to afford the PS3 anyway, no way they were going to have cheaper games.

Development costs have skyrocketed, but as others have said how expensive were cartridges/ROM to produce and license from Nintendo compared to the disc-based media we have now?

Does the extra 10 bucks go into the developers pocket?

kgrogers1979

But again PC has no licensing fees, so the price increase isn't due to that. Its up to each individual publisher to decide what to charge. The new Jagged Alliance game, which I am very excited for, is only $40.

If the dramatically increasing development costs didn't cause them to raise the price of their games then Microsoft raising the licensing fees, which is pocket change in comparison, certainly would not have done so either.

Tracer Bullet

This is what it must feel like to go insane.

At any rate, everyone is just going around in circles, so I'll just say this--it's possible that some publishers have tried to get $60 for PC games because they're getting $60 for console games, and it's not possible to ascribe a motive to that unless you figure out why console games increased to $60 in the first place.

Raul3

Michael Corvin

I had another response typed up before lunch and just had to walk away.

ultimaton

With Sony pricing the "low end" PS3 at $100 more than the high end X360, I don't think what you're proposing would have made a significant difference in the end.

Drexl

The bottom line is, they found that the market would bear $60 games, so that is what they charge.

Groucho

Also, I believe Microsoft wanted a higher licensing fee.

kgrogers1979

Insane?

A) Development costs have increased exponentially.

B) Game prices had been decreasing in real value because $50 today is not the same thing as $50 yesterday.

C) Licensing fees have increased in a small amount relative to A and B.

A and/or B are much more likely to cause game prices to increase than C. Most likely a combination of A, B, and C were the true cause, but to say it was C alone now that is insane.