Steam sales "cheapen intellectual property"...says EA...

[Zaxxon]

And right after I posted and looked at my newsfeed, I see a Joystiq interview with Todd Howard discussing how much effort and thought they put into deciding how to package and price (or not price) DLC for Skyrim, and also mentioning how happy Bethesda has been with Steamworks and how they'd love to have it on other platforms.

Compare/contrast the EA and Bethesda mentalities to the world of gaming in 2012, and then draw a conclusion as to whether Steam sales are the problem.

[SlapBone]

DeMartini goes on to add: “Also what Steam does might be teaching the customer that “I might not want it in the first month, but if I look at it in four or five months, I’ll get one of those weekend sales and I’ll buy it at that time at 75 percent off.”

Zactly. This dude knows his shit.

[tgb]

People did that before Steam. I'm not going to argue that Steam doesn't make it easier for folks to hold out, but it's not like Steam is the first entity to discount old PC games.

No, but they were the first, probably, to discount relatively new ones. It used to take a year or more for titles to hit the bargain bin in B&M stores.

[Chaz]

I'm not convinced that EA as a company is worse than Activision.

I'm waiting for when publishers figure out that there are price points other than $60. Your potential market for games at $60 is always going to be limited. If you start releasing games at lower prices, you open up to a whole mess of price-conscious buyers. Yes, your per-unit revenue will be lower, but the idea is that it's possible to make that up in volume. Something that the Steam sales have actually borne out.

[LawBeefaroni]

People did that before Steam. I'm not going to argue that Steam doesn't make it easier for folks to hold out, but it's not like Steam is the first entity to discount old PC games.

No, but they were the first, probably, to discount relatively new ones. It used to take a year or more for titles to hit the bargain bin in B&M stores.

GoGamer nee CompuExpert! But that was maybe $10 off max, after shipping.

[Zaxxon]

I'm not convinced that EA as a company is worse than Activision.

Yeah, me either. In my post I mentioned EA because they brought this up this time. Activision is certainly just as bad.

I'm waiting for when publishers figure out that there are price points other than $60. Your potential market for games at $60 is always going to be limited. If you start releasing games at lower prices, you open up to a whole mess of price-conscious buyers.

Absolutely. This is actually my favorite thing about Steam (even more than the sales!). It sure seems to me that in the past couple of years we've gotten more smaller-scale games that do very well for themselves on Steam. It may not be that we've seen more, but they're certainly more visible thanks to Steam. Jeff Vogel has had a sales renaissance since coming to Steam (and the iPad as well). Torchlight ($20 max) was a smashing success, and TL2's pre-sales have been enormous. Dungeons of Dredmor did very well. Orcs Must Die, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Defense Grid, Limbo, Magika, Braid... These were all small-budget games that [seem to] have sold very well in the context of their budgets. Steam drastically lowers the cost of bringing a small-budget game to market. Even if it's true that Steam is the death knell of $60, massive budget games (and clearly I don't think it is), I'd welcome that. I'd much rather have a gaming future filled with small- and mid-budget development houses selling me appropriately-priced, quality games. Add on Steam's ancillary benefits (non-shitty DRM, friends lists that give me a nice accurate view into what games folks think are worth paying for and playing, cloud storage of saves, etc), and it's clear to me that Steam is a positive force to the industry as a whole.

[Cylus Maxii]

I think part of the Steam hate is that smaller developers can market more directly through Steam and bypass the larger publishers' cut entirely. EA won't be able to buy smaller companies if they can be profitable directly through Steam, and make the games that they want.

Its the same effect that has been seen in music publishing and the literary markets. Lots of smaller labels market directly/electronically without the need for a larger publishers infrastructure for printing and distribution. The web has changed the way that many things are sold. EA has seen the marking on the wall and is flailing instead of changing. Steam is the future baby! EA should quit crying.

[tgb]

$60 is a more common price point for console games than PC games. Other than Diablo 3, Skyrim, and Kingdom of Amular, what other mainstream titles have come out recently at that price? $40-$50 is more the norm, and $30 is becoming more and more common.

More games came out at the $60 point back in the heyday of Origin, 20 years ago. What other industry has seen the average price of a consumer good drop over the last 20 years? Granted, the distribution system is radically different, but still.......

[Zaxxon]

$60 is a more common price point for console games than PC games. Other than Diablo 3, Skyrim, and Kingdom of Amular, what other mainstream titles have come out recently at that price? $40-$50 is more the norm, and $30 is becoming more and more common.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show? You can't discount the data that you don't like. To name some other recent ones at $59: Call of Duty 2012 R2 June Edition Mk II, Max Payne 3, Kingdoms of Amalur, Assassins Creed: Revelations, ARMA, etc. Tier-1 releases release at $49.99 - $59.99, almost without exception.

[stessier]

I'm not convinced that EA as a company is worse than Activision.

I'm waiting for when publishers figure out that there are price points other than $60. Your potential market for games at $60 is always going to be limited. If you start releasing games at lower prices, you open up to a whole mess of price-conscious buyers. Yes, your per-unit revenue will be lower, but the idea is that it's possible to make that up in volume. Something that the Steam sales have actually borne out.

You would think EA would have already figured it out. Remember the last NFL 2k? It went on sale for 29.95 and EA went nuts because it had to discount Madden. As I recall, both still sold really well. It stuns me that they learned nothing from this (except, of course, to make sure their future licenses were exclusive).

[Zaxxon]

I'm not convinced that EA as a company is worse than Activision.

I'm waiting for when publishers figure out that there are price points other than $60. Your potential market for games at $60 is always going to be limited. If you start releasing games at lower prices, you open up to a whole mess of price-conscious buyers. Yes, your per-unit revenue will be lower, but the idea is that it's possible to make that up in volume. Something that the Steam sales have actually borne out.

You would think EA would have already figured it out. Remember the last NFL 2k? It went on sale for 29.95 and EA went nuts because it had to discount Madden. As I recall, both still sold really well. It stuns me that they learned nothing from this (except, of course, to make sure their future licenses were exclusive).

It's funny that you mention the exclusive licenses. Bill Harris gets into it in one of the links I posted on the previous page, but those exclusive licenses are one of the reasons EA is so screwed. It's basically bidding against itself across sports now and the licenses cost so much that they have to sell ludicrous numbers of each of their franchise sports games each year just to break even.

[Buatha]

I don't have much to add intellectually to the discussion, but I feel that Steam, much like the Kindle for e-books, has exponentially increased my purchases of games.

Before Steam, I'd probably pick the top one or two games in my favorite genres. Since games generally run $50 on the PC at release, and if sticking to the brick & mortar model, they generally take a loooong time to come down in price except for a sale here and there which only will reduce the price by $10-$15. The Steam sales will now have me buy 5 games (or more) at $20 each vs. 2 games at $50. I've even re-bought a few games where I already had the physical copies for ease of use.

[GreenGoo]

People did that before Steam. I'm not going to argue that Steam doesn't make it easier for folks to hold out, but it's not like Steam is the first entity to discount old PC games.

No, but they were the first, probably, to discount relatively new ones. It used to take a year or more for titles to hit the bargain bin in B&M stores.

Because business school wasn't able to teach these guys what to do with their product as demand dropped off. By waiting a year or longer they were leaving money on the table. Steam will happily fix that for them.

It's too bad the consumer would never accept a real time adjustment to pricing based on demand. Slow day? 50% off. Busy day? 200% If not for the psychological factors that would give you a real time ticker on how much the public values any game at any given moment.

[tgb]

$60 is a more common price point for console games than PC games. Other than Diablo 3, Skyrim, and Kingdom of Amular, what other mainstream titles have come out recently at that price? $40-$50 is more the norm, and $30 is becoming more and more common.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show? You can't discount the data that you don't like. To name some other recent ones at $59: Call of Duty 2012 R2 June Edition Mk II, Max Payne 3, Kingdoms of Amalur, Assassins Creed: Revelations, ARMA, etc. Tier-1 releases release at $49.99 - $59.99, almost without exception.

I stand corrected. It's not that I deliberately discounted that data, it's that the data pertained to games I have no interest in, so I was unaware of it.

I still maintain that the majority of new releases come out at the $39.95 price point or less, which is still $10 less than 20 years ago. Back then even the lamest Pac-Man knockoff sold for $50.

[tgb]

One other point re Steam: The other argument that EA (and others of that ilk) make is that used games are killing the market. The advent of Steam and other digital distribution services effectively put an end to used PC game sales.

[GreenGoo]

One other point re Steam: The other argument that EA (and others of that ilk) make is that used games are killing the market. The advent of Steam and other digital distribution services effectively put an end to used PC game sales.

The argument is basically that there are other, cheaper options, and that's not allowed. Anything which doesn't directly put money in their pocket at what they've decided to be the "correct" price point is killing the industry.

It's so transparent that I feel a bit ill. Because people will and do believe it.

[SlapBone]

Anything which doesn't directly put money in their pocket at what they've decided to be the "correct" price point is killing the industry.

Our executives have had to curtail their cash usage- like using $100 bills to line the soles of their shoes so they can sneak up on bleary-eyed developers and read their emails over their shoulders.

[Bakhtosh]

I haven't got anything constructive to say, but I'll say this: I just love that not a single person in this thread has bothered to get the name of EA's online store, Origin, right.

Ahem...post #1

And that kind of thinking is exactly why Steam will continue to outperform the Origins and other developer-housed digital distribution platforms.

Where I pluralized it intentionally to group it with other digital distribution platforms.

[Lordnine]

More games came out at the $60 point back in the heyday of Origin, 20 years ago. What other industry has seen the average price of a consumer good drop over the last 20 years? Granted, the distribution system is radically different, but still.......

That’s actually a good point that I don’t think many people consider. Games cost more to produce now than ever before. In some cases they cost more than big budget Hollywood movies. Everything else we purchase has gone up in price yet games have mostly stayed the same. They also provide more entertainment in hours per dollar than movies. Why are people so hesitant to pay full price?

I don’t hold myself separate from this; I don’t like paying $60 either but the fact remains that I get more value out of $60 of games than I do out of $60 of movies.

[JonathanStrange]

I don’t hold myself separate from this; I don’t like paying $60 either but the fact remains that I get more value out of $60 of games than I do out of $60 of movies.

Agree.

For a few games.

Very few.

A company trying to maximize its profits and/or total revenue (rather than maintaining a high per unit price) might then lower its prices to capture the less enthusiastic gamers' dollars. The players who're only mildly interested in their game might be willing to cough up $30.

And prices would again fall...

[GreenGoo]

I don't pay full price (this is a loaded phrase anyway. What is the *correct price* for a game? What is so special about 60 bucks that that's where the line is drawn? And it better be more meaningful than "that's what it was before" because that's not a reason) because I don't have to, which is why EA is pissed. If Steam (and anyone who partners with Steam) would just get with the program they would be able to maintain artificially high pricing. Price wars only benefit the consumer, and no one wants that.

In all seriousness L9, we are paying what the market will bear AND generate the most revenue. Don't you think that if Steam could make more money with higher prices they would? And isn't making money what this is all about?

Steam saw a niche and filled it. And suddenly that niche is no longer a niche but a main stream, highly competitive option for nearly all your gaming purchases.

Steam is good for capitalism, good for the gaming industry (the exact opposite of what chumly says), good for consumers and good for variety of products. Outside of my issues with DRM that are not specific to Steam, Steam is a godsend for both the development houses and consumers.

EA is a publisher. Just like the RIAA. They are (were) the gate keepers, and they set the prices. They are just pissed that that is no longer fundamentally true. They are literally crying because the market changed without their permission, and they'd like it to return to its former state if you please. Otherwise everybody dies.

It's laughable, literally crazy insane funny, to watch all the old school companies and execs from various IP industries go through the same growing pains, make the exact same arguments in an attempt to hold back a market that no longer needs them, or at a minimum, is not controlled by them. It's like they can't relate their product to other products. Music, Movies, Games. All these industries are experiencing similar changes in distribution and production cost reductions and people are finding ways to get those products to the customer at a significant savings over what we had come to expect prior to these changes. And that pisses the gate keepers off to no end. It's arrogance, stagnation and greed. How arrogant do you have to be to suggest that your way is the only way and any other way will spell the end of the products you love? We've heard it from the RIAA. We've heard it from the MPAA. Now we're hearing it from EA? Do they all subscribe to the same Press Release quarterly for their material?

How execs can say things that are basically paraphrased as "our competitors have found a way to be successful while charging less. They better stop it or everybody dies, and you wouldn't like that". It's fear mongering, extortion, ludicrous and the exact opposite of competing in a Free(ish) Market. The capitalists of the US should tar and feather these execs every time they try to reduce competition rather than encourage it.

If you don't pay for the full CD the artists will starve! If you don't pay full price for that new game the development teams will get fired!

Are the music and gaming industries charities or businesses? Why is making sure the artist eats or the coder stays employed my problem? Especially since this fearmongering is demonstrably untrue and a complete fabrication of the RIAA anyway. I just want to get good value for my buck, and suddenly that makes me guilty of putting people out of work? I owe it to the system to consume wisely, to help keep it efficient.

If Steam doesn't stop being successful with their business model the entire gaming industry will fold? I'm willing to take that bet, Mr. Exec.

[Bakhtosh]

There are 17 games in Amazon's Upcoming Releases PC Games page.
2 @ > $50: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier - Deluxe Edition, Far Cry 3 - Deluxe Edition,
8 @ $45-$50: The Secret World, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Far Cry 3, Spec Ops: The Line Premium Edition, End of Nations Collector's Edition, Darksiders II (box $50, download $45), Sleeping Dogs, Damage Inc., Pacific Squadron WWII
4 @ $40-$45: Legends of Pegasus, Sniper 2: Ghost Warrior, Sniper Elite V2, Port Royale 3: Pirates & Merchant
2 @ $30: LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Civ V Expansion
and 1 $15 casual game

And as long as we're being honest, games no longer come with custom designed and produced boxes - they're sold in stock DVD cases when they're not downloaded, saving all of the physical distribution costs. There are no more thick paper manuals or extras in the box (unless you pay $10 or more for the "Collector's Edition"). And they are very rarely as well tested before release as games used to be. The publishers have found ways to cut costs to keep up with the times. Plus look at all of the expansions, DLC, and "pay to win" items that are almost pure profit.

[Bakhtosh]

I preordered Torchlight 2. I'm waiting on Diablo3 to drop a bit. I realize that Blizzard will likely hold to the old school schedule and keep the price high for 6 months or so. So be it. I'm not paying $60 for a game that won't work if the magic smoke gets out of my router.

[abr]

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Gabe Newell on the issue of price reductions (emphasis mine):

Now we did something where we decided to look at price elasticity. Without making announcements, we varied the price of one of our products. We have Steam so we can watch user behavior in real time. That gives us a useful tool for making experiments which you can’t really do through a lot of other distribution mechanisms. What we saw was that pricing was perfectly elastic. In other words, our gross revenue would remain constant. We thought, hooray, we understand this really well. There’s no way to use price to increase or decrease the size of your business.

But then we did this different experiment where we did a sale. The sale is a highly promoted event that has ancillary media like comic books and movies associated with it. We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40. Which is completely not predicted by our previous experience with silent price variation. …

Then we decided that all we were really doing was time-shifting revenue. We were moving sales forward from the future. Then when we analyzed that we saw two things that were very surprising. Promotions on the digital channel increased sales at retail at the same time, and increased sales after the sale was finished, which falsified the temporal shifting and channel cannibalization arguments. Essentially, your audience, the people who bought the game, were more effective than traditional promotional tools. So we tried a third-party product to see if we had some artificial home-field advantage. We saw the same pricing phenomenon. Twenty-five percent, 50 percent and 75 percent very reliably generate different increases in gross revenue.

The full interview has more interesting stuff and can be found here.

[TiLT]

And they are very rarely as well tested before release as games used to be.

Your other points are fair, but that particular one is not. Games are tested more thoroughly these days than ever before. I think a lot of people are looking back on older titles with rose-colored glasses, or only remembering their old games as they were when fully patched. Back in the old days you could purchase games that were completely broken upon release, to the degree where they simply weren't playable. I can think of two off the top of my head: Legends of Valour (the Amiga version would inevitably crash, and saving/loading games didn't work) and Outpost (things beyond your control could make the game unwinnable/unplayable, the game was filled with bugs, and it lacked features that were written on the box). Even games that we hold dear to our hearts, such as Fallout 2, were extremely buggy messes upon release.

[Reemul]

In the UK our majour game company The Game (and gamestation) went in to administration (chapter 11 equivalent). Too many high value 2nd hand console games and too high a new price point.


Anyways they shut half their stores and got bought out and are still in business. Where I live there are 2 stores which I visited today and their prices are still really poor.

Max Payne £37.99 - Steam £29.99
Terrari - £24.99 - Steam £5.99
Diablo III - £42.99 - Battlenet £39.99
Blades of Time - £24.99 - Limited Edition on GG was on offer at £6.99 and activated on Steam.

This is just a few examples but when I am in there there is nothing that says buy me as I am good value.

Now I am even pre ordering on Steam as they seem cheaper than in store prices and I will admit to loading up Steam when I know the offers change or get updated on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 6pm every day for the daily deals. Origin is just something I use when specific games need it.

[Zaxxon]

More games came out at the $60 point back in the heyday of Origin, 20 years ago. What other industry has seen the average price of a consumer good drop over the last 20 years? Granted, the distribution system is radically different, but still.......

That’s actually a good point that I don’t think many people consider. Games cost more to produce now than ever before. In some cases they cost more than big budget Hollywood movies. Everything else we purchase has gone up in price yet games have mostly stayed the same.

I keep seeing this argument, and I don't know where it comes from. 20 years ago, games in the USA did not cost $60. They just didn't. I can remember the days of yore when we'd go buy the latest Sierra On-line game for $39. NES games cost $39 or $49. SNES games cost $39 or $49. Genesis games, the same. Your average shareware title went for $15-$35. I'm fairly certain that the only game I've ever paid $59 for is StarCraft II, and I've bought 3.4 shit-tons of games in my lifetime. Now granted once you adjust for inflation, the effective prices haven't risen and have in fact come down. But I don't think anyone here was talking about inflation-adjusted pricing, but rather were saying that games actually cost $60. That's not true.

[tgb]

More games came out at the $60 point back in the heyday of Origin, 20 years ago. What other industry has seen the average price of a consumer good drop over the last 20 years? Granted, the distribution system is radically different, but still.......

That’s actually a good point that I don’t think many people consider. Games cost more to produce now than ever before. In some cases they cost more than big budget Hollywood movies. Everything else we purchase has gone up in price yet games have mostly stayed the same.

I keep seeing this argument, and I don't know where it comes from. 20 years ago, games in the USA did not cost $60. They just didn't. I can remember the days of yore when we'd go buy the latest Sierra On-line game for $39. NES games cost $39 or $49. SNES games cost $39 or $49. Genesis games, the same. Your average shareware title went for $15-$35. I'm fairly certain that the only game I've ever paid $59 for is StarCraft II, and I've bought 3.4 shit-tons of games in my lifetime. Now granted once you adjust for inflation, the effective prices haven't risen and have in fact come down. But I don't think anyone here was talking about inflation-adjusted pricing, but rather were saying that games actually cost $60. That's not true.

I didn't say all - I said more than today. I also was talking about PC games so bringing up Genesis or NES games is disingenuous. And Sierra games were $49.95 more often than not.

[Zaxxon]

I didn't say all - I said more than today. I also was talking about PC games so bringing up Genesis or NES games is disingenuous. And Sierra games were $49.95 more often than not.

And I'm saying I can't remember a single game that cost $59 prior to the 2000s.

As to Sierra, they had a wide range--not everything they published was King's Quest VI.

[Smoove_B]

I want to say that I paid $60+ in 1996 for Daggerfall. I am looking for the box to see if I slipped the CompUSA receipt inside, but it's not in an obvious spot. I also clearly remember paying $80+ for some type of SNES RPG back in the early 1990s and I'm nearly certain all of the console games were $59+. I also think I paid $60+ for Ultima IX back in '99, however until I upgraded my computer a year later (and the game was patched) it was completely unplayable.

Last night I finished Prototype 2 and the credits ran for close to 10 minutes. If they had to pay everyone listed, they couldn't have possibly sold enough copies.

[LordMortis]

Even if it's true that Steam is the death knell of $60, massive budget games (and clearly I don't think it is), I'd welcome that. I'd much rather have a gaming future filled with small- and mid-budget development houses selling me appropriately-priced, quality games.

Half of this. While I don't play $60 massive budget games, I don't welcome their demise. I'm just not part of their demographic. It's not that I'd see EA die but I'd love to see them take their attempts at influencing the rest of the industry and shove up their EAss.

But the important thing is that I'd love also love my gaming future to be filled with small and mid budget minded games by independent developers with their independent ideas.

What other industry has seen the average price of a consumer good drop over the last 20 years? Granted, the distribution system is radically different, but still.......

Most discretionary spending for durable goods? New cars are better and cheaper. Houses are cheaper. Computers and electronics are better and cheaper.

OTOH, the bare necessities.... food is more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Utilities are more expensive. Health Care is more expensive. Insurance of all sorts is more expensive.

That’s actually a good point that I don’t think many people consider. Games cost more to produce now than ever before. In some cases they cost more than big budget Hollywood movies. Everything else we purchase has gone up in price yet games have mostly stayed the same. They also provide more entertainment in hours per dollar than movies. Why are people so hesitant to pay full price?

I don’t hold myself separate from this; I don’t like paying $60 either but the fact remains that I get more value out of $60 of games than I do out of $60 of movies.

While that's a point I try to consider, I then remember a few things. 1) I don't get stuff for my games any more. No box, no thick manual, no cloth map, no trinket, no game that is complete without patching. 2) I'm simply not interested in the kind of games that are trying to give me a bigger than Hollywood experience. Maybe there just isn't enough of a market for the bigger than Hollywood experience in games at $60 a pop and developers need to adjust their dreams of production at least until they're proven.

I'm up to about a $60 price point on many board games and probably spend around $500 a year in this fashion (ow. That's a horrible realization), games that I usually play before I buy and I rarely feel like my entertainment money hasn't been well spent. Whereas I'm down to about 1/2-2 $50-$60 computer games a year and I still feel like my money was wasted almost 50% of the time. That's me and my psychology. EA isn't going to change. As a matter of fact EA was strong contributor to this psychology. The last game I bought from EA that I loved was probably Dungeon Keeper 2 and DK2 was far from the last game I bought from them. OTOH, I played to Dungeons of Dreadmore for two half evenings and haven't had time for it since and I loved it. I bought an expansion I haven't touched and it doesn't bother me. Psychonauts was horrible game for me that I purchased on the OO effect and it reminded of why I don't buy adventure style games and I was a little annoyed but at $5 that annoyance was gone in a day. I have dozens of games I haven't played yet that cost me about the same as pissing away money on 3 big budget games and it only bothers me that still prone to impulse shopping, not that Steam sucked $200 out of me for nothing.

The last game I paid $50 for (through Steam I might add) was Civ V. And it was horrible and they came out with a ton expansions and pay for DLC and I kick myself for buying a crappy game at $50 and for knowing it's useless without $100 in add ons. And my psychology is reinforced again.

and Outpost (things beyond your control could make the game unwinnable/unplayable, the game was filled with bugs, and it lacked features that were written on the box).

Outpost is symbolic of where it all started to go wrong. Where downloading a patch for $50 game right out of the box was necessary. I can't think of a game like this from before Outpost. And that was in a time where the Internet was ubiquitous in households. My rose colored glasses go back further than this. When you got a lot less game for your $50 but each game was still a new experience and each game came with a ritual of stuff to go through to set you expectations for the experience you were about to have with the game.

I keep seeing this argument, and I don't know where it comes from. 20 years ago, games in the USA did not cost $60. They just didn't. I can remember the days of yore when we'd go buy the latest Sierra On-line game for $39. NES games cost $39 or $49. SNES games cost $39 or $49. Genesis games, the same. Your average shareware title went for $15-$35. I'm fairly certain that the only game I've ever paid $59 for is StarCraft II, and I've bought 3.4 shit-tons of games in my lifetime. Now granted once you adjust for inflation, the effective prices haven't risen and have in fact come down. But I don't think anyone here was talking about inflation-adjusted pricing, but rather were saying that games actually cost $60. That's not true.

20 Years ago, I think the price point for new games PC and Console was $40-$50 for AAA and $30-$40 most others. However, even then we were combing for $10 titles. I still remember finding Herzog Zwie for Genesis for $10 and was the best purchase I could imagine. Way better than any $40 Genesis title out there.

[Chaz]

I didn't say all - I said more than today. I also was talking about PC games so bringing up Genesis or NES games is disingenuous. And Sierra games were $49.95 more often than not.

And I'm saying I can't remember a single game that cost $59 prior to the 2000s.

As to Sierra, they had a wide range--not everything they published was King's Quest VI.

They definitely were north of $60 back in the SNES era. I'm 100% certain that I paid about $70 for Final Fantasy 3 and Super Metroid. I think they came down when things got away from the cartridge format. I don't remember the price ceiling on PC games as well.

[Carpet_pissr]

Excellent post

Best post I've read all week.

[Zaxxon]

I want to say that I paid $60+ in 1996 for Daggerfall. I am looking for the box to see if I slipped the CompUSA receipt inside, but it's not in an obvious spot. I also clearly remember paying $80+ for some type of SNES RPG back in the early 1990s and I'm nearly certain all of the console games were $59+.

If you did, these were definitely the exception. It's proving difficult for me to find actual pics of advertisements or store walls from back in the day, but I distinctly remember the biggest price points being $39-$49 for all the consoles I've owned in the past, and for PC games as well.

Here's a Sears ad with the NES MSRPs from 1990:


This isn't really a salient argument for me to keep pursuing since once you adjust for inflation, the bottom line is that games are effectively cheaper now than they were then regardless of which of our theories on old-school pricing is correct, so I'm just going to slink away and let it go.

[Smoove_B]

The point for me is that "back in the day" when I had no money and very little disposable income, I'd always end up paying ~$50 for a new game. Some were good; some were total duds. Not unlike the CD industry where I was paying $19.99+ to get a new release back in the early 1990s only to find it was one good song and nine fillers, eventually I stopped buying new music...and new games. Now that I have disposable income up to my ears, I remember the lessons learned during my golden-era of gaming. And if I have $60 to spend generally speaking I'm going to look to get as much gaming as I can -- which usually means buying more than one game - whether that's because it's been intentionally priced lower or on the 30 day discount plan. For years I'd scour the store shelves looking for sales but I honestly don't remember the last time I was in a GameStop (or where ever) actually looking at retail boxes. Not only is their selection severely limited, when you add in my time, they cannot compete with GOG or STEAM.

I'm glad EA thinks so highly of their "intellectual property". Now if they could only hold the same opinion of their customers we might be in a different position.

[LordMortis]

Now if they could only hold the same opinion of their customers we might be in a different position.

Not only this but if they had treated their customer base as any sort of asset for the last twenty years. I was finished with them a long time ago and letting them go sucked.

I remember when they put out the budget conscious $20 classics that came in those thin cardboard cases like Mail Order Monsters, Seven Cities of Gold, and Age of Adventure (which gave you two games for $20). They were by far my favorite company then and I considered their titles synonymous with quality. Oh, how the times changed. Now those were my rose colored glasses.

[Zaxxon]

The point for me is that "back in the day" when I had no money and very little disposable income, I'd always end up paying ~$50 for a new game. Some were good; some were total duds. Not unlike the CD industry where I was paying $19.99+ to get a new release back in the early 1990s only to find it was one good song and nine fillers, eventually I stopped buying new music...and new games. Now that I have disposable income up to my ears, I remember the lessons learned during my golden-era of gaming. And if I have $60 to spend generally speaking I'm going to look to get as much gaming as I can -- which usually means buying more than one game - whether that's because it's been intentionally priced lower or on the 30 day discount plan. For years I'd scour the store shelves looking for sales but I honestly don't remember the last time I was in a GameStop (or where ever) actually looking at retail boxes. Not only is their selection severely limited, when you add in my time, they cannot compete with GOG or STEAM.

I'm glad EA thinks so highly of their "intellectual property". Now if they could only hold the same opinion of their customers we might be in a different position.

Concur completely. I think <insert major publisher here>'s real issue with Steam and the current state of gaming in general is that the control has shifted drastically from the publisher to the consumer. We no longer live in a world where a few publishers, hardware makers and retailers work together to ensure a locked-down environment where all games cost X +/- some small Y, sales are tightly controlled, and the consumer's choice is artificially limited. The pricing elasticity is something they could probably [eventually, grudgingly] get on board with since Valve can make a strong case that it doesn't harm actual revenue. But the loss of control? The fact that their games compete with anyone who wants to put something up on Steam, at any price they want? Metacritic and its ilk bringing greater transparency to game quality? iOS/Android games that often provide as much entertainment as a traditional $60 game, but for a buck or three?

Trouble.

[PLW]

Now if they could only hold the same opinion of their customers we might be in a different position.

Not only this but if they had treated their customer base as any sort of asset for the last twenty years. I was finished with them a long time ago and letting them go sucked.

I remember when they put out the budget conscious $20 classics that came in those thin cardboard cases like Mail Order Monsters, Seven Cities of Gold, and Age of Adventure (which gave you two games for $20). They were by far my favorite company then and I considered their titles synonymous with quality. Oh, how the times changed. Now those were my rose colored glasses.

Exactly. Blizzard is the obvious current counterexample to EA's claim. Do they ever put their games on deed discount? They seem to be doing alright.

[LordMortis]

Metacritic and its ilk bringing greater transparency to game quality? iOS/Android games that often provide as much entertainment as a traditional $60 game, but for a buck or three?

There's the real problem. I don't know if EA knows this or not. I assume they do but who knows? People are realizing that having fun playing games isn't necessarily all about AAA 3D graphics on the latest rig. Gaming is finding a distraction you enjoy and enjoying it.

[LawBeefaroni]

I want to say that I paid $60+ in 1996 for Daggerfall. I am looking for the box to see if I slipped the CompUSA receipt inside, but it's not in an obvious spot. I also clearly remember paying $80+ for some type of SNES RPG back in the early 1990s and I'm nearly certain all of the console games were $59+. I also think I paid $60+ for Ultima IX back in '99, however until I upgraded my computer a year later (and the game was patched) it was completely unplayable.

Last night I finished Prototype 2 and the credits ran for close to 10 minutes. If they had to pay everyone listed, they couldn't have possibly sold enough copies.

FWIW, I paid around $59 with tax for Fallout. I worked in a computer repair shop as a kid in the mid-late 80s and got 50% off retail for games and still paid over $20 each for Ultima III, IV, V. The first two were years after release. Pretty sure they all had lists of $59.99.