Gamestop president:"Digital games are too cheap"

[mark201200]

GameSpot Article: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gamestop-worried-digital-games-are-too-cheap/1100-6423771/

 

Seriously!?

I think this is complete bulls**t

Why should we pay more for our games because gamestop president is worried about his company?

[StingBull]

 

"Industry will need to work together to continue to price goods in a way that sustains profitability."

 

Don't worry man, everyone's profiting. Well, except you.

[othertomperson]

Isn't price fixing illegal?

[Mao_Zedong]

He does make a decent point, super cheap AAA games aren't sustainable and will lead to lower quality. I am not saying discounts are bad, but the people who make the games need money too.

[Misanthrope]

Yeah gamestop, amazing what it can be achieved with one less fucking middle man right?

[Nineshadow]

<<Later in the call, Bartell said that $22 is "clearly an unsustainable price point for a game that physically is at $60.">>

 

He forgot to mention that a $60 physical game gives the devs just about as much money as the digital copy,if not less sometimes.

 

I remember an interview with a game dev remaking a game from 1995-2000.He said that he had to sell physical copies with $50-60 and that they would only get around $20 from each one.Now they're selling digital copies of the new game for $20 .

[Lotus]

He does make a decent point, super cheap AAA games aren't sustainable and will lead to lower quality. I am not saying discounts are bad, but the people who make the games need money too.

Only the ones that don't sell get super cheap, or if a game has been out for a long time and already made bank. That's not the problem. The problem is GameStop losing out on their market share because they deal in physical games and digital games cut them out of the picture.

 

Basically this is them crying because they aren't nimble enough to adapt.

[RH00D]

Don't really agree with him since digital games are still $60 at launch. They don't get cheaper usually until a few months afterwards on a good sale.

 

By the way, he does have a point though. The average price of a game in 1995 was $50, accounting for inflation and if games had no actual price increase, they should be costing $71.78 today. The fact that they are selling for $60 means that they are effectively selling them for less than they use to.

[lutewan]

agh its alot cheaper to make a digital copy

 

[zanduh]

The developers get the same money regardless.

 

So basically your pockets are hurting because we can cut out middlemen? Oh no. 

[Sauron]

Lol so now 60$ is a minimum price? GTFO gamestop, As if AAA developers didn't get enough money already and indie developers weren't completely shut off from physical media. 60$ always was bullsh*t for a videogame, but I could kind of understand it because of shipping costs, storage costs etc. With digital distribution it just doesn't make sense anymore. Gamestop, either you can afford to price stuff low (which you probably can you greedy bastards) or if you can't, give it up or open a website where you sell steam keys.

[Mao_Zedong]

Only the ones that don't sell get super cheap, or if a game has been out for a long time and already made bank. That's not the problem. The problem is GameStop losing out on their market share because they deal in physical games and digital games cut them out of the picture.

 

Basically this is them crying because they aren't nimble enough to adapt.

I don't support gamestop an any way, but when people won't buy any games for full price it gets iffy.

[mark201200]

Don't really agree with him since digital games are still $60 at launch.

do you know g2a?

[Lays]

Does anyone buy digital games from gamestop anyways.....?  Maybe they should wake up and start selling digital copies instead.

 

Perhaps have a card with a key on it you can buy in store for cheaper than the physical copy, and then take it home and enter it on their site to download it.

[the ginger gamer]

wow most companies are going down hill fast. People need to go back to collage and learn how to properly run their businesses. 

[AlexGoesHigh]

He does make a decent point, super cheap AAA games aren't sustainable and will lead to lower quality. I am not saying discounts are bad, but the people who make the games need money too.

not exactly, the margin for profit isn't that big for games, selling 20000 copies at full price accounts for 120 million bucks in sales and that's no where near the amount a AAA game sells on release, something like DAI must have sold 50k and up on release, what leads to shitty games is shitty management and short development periods, which lead to bugs and a broken game

[SeriouslyMikey]

No, digital games are too expensive, if we're they're not to keep with inflation like they actually haven't. They shouldn't be £50 as they don't come with the game box, game disk and piece of shit paper that they now call a manual when in fact it just tells you to enter a code to download some day one DLC or to access their crappy servers. 

If the price of games had inflated, like everything else, I'd expect that they would be in the £100's. Heck, Xbox original games were around £30-£40 new. 

[Lotus]

I don't support gamestop an any way, but when people won't buy any games for full price it gets iffy.

People DO buy games at full price, even digital games at launch are full price of a hard copy. I have bought several digital games at launch at full price, but only ones that I really care about (Diablo 3 being the worst decision ever). Then there are the games that I don't care about and so after 2 years I picked up Arkham Asylum for $10 and that's money in their coffers that never would have been there otherwise. I'm confident that the record sales are helped by the ease at which online preorders and sales can be made and "delivered."

[Sauron]

By the way, he does have a point though. The average price of a game in 1995 was $50, accounting for inflation and if games had no actual price increase, they should be costing $71.78 today. The fact that they are selling for $60 means that they are effectively selling them for less than they use to.

 

just as an example, BF4 plus season pass (day one dlc is just part of the game, they cut it off to profit) was 110$. 110 - 71.78 = 38.22$ of pure greed. Not to mention 70% of the 50$ price tag in 1995 was due to the actual costs of shipping, storing and distributing the physical medium, whereas a digital copy has none of those costs.

[BrianPena]

Don't really agree with him since digital games are still $60 at launch. They don't get cheaper usually until a few months afterwards on a good sale.

 

By the way, he does have a point though. The average price of a game in 1995 was $50, accounting for inflation and if games had no actual price increase, they should be costing $71.78 today. The fact that they are selling for $60 means that they are effectively selling them for less than they use to.

You have to take into account how many people played video  games in 1995 and now. Right now the video game industry worth billions upon billions of dollars today.

[Nowak]

Has Gamestop not learned from Blockbuster's demise or something? If they continue thinking this way the same fate will befall them.

[LAwLz]

Don't really agree with him since digital games are still $60 at launch. They don't get cheaper usually until a few months afterwards on a good sale.

 

By the way, he does have a point though. The average price of a game in 1995 was $50, accounting for inflation and if games had no actual price increase, they should be costing $71.78 today. The fact that they are selling for $60 means that they are effectively selling them for less than they use to.

The bigger your distribution network is, the cheaper it is to deliver your products to your customers. Back in 1995 the cost of acquiring a customer and making a sale was far higher than today.

On top of that, there supply and demand is completely different these days. The more supply you got, the lower the value of your item is. With digital distribution there is literally an infinite supply.

 

There are a gazillion reasons for why games should (and are) cheaper now than for a few decades ago.

If you ONLY look at inflation then yes they should cost more today. It's silly to ignore all the other factors than determine the price of a product though. Imagine if we used the same logic for computers. A single 500MHz chip was 500 dollars back in 1999? Then a 1GHz chip should cost 1000 dollars today!

[Nineshadow]

A single 500MHz chip was 500 dollars back in 1999? Then a 1GHz chip should cost 1000 dollars today!

"It can be OC-ed to 3GHz with liquid nitrogen so costumers should give us $3000"

[AlexGoesHigh]

just as an example, BF4 plus season pass (day one dlc is just part of the game, they cut it off to profit) was 110$. 110 - 71.78 = 38.22$ of pure greed. Not to mention 70% of the 50$ price tag in 1995 was due to the actual costs of shipping, storing and distributing the physical medium, whereas a digital copy has none of those costs.

not to mention that digital must have a better cut that physical retail, selling ps and xbox games only gives the developer/publisher 45% of the sale, the other 45% gets eaten by MS or sony, and the remaining 10% the retailer, which is why this mofo is complaining about, raising the prices equals a better cut for them without demanding a bigger cut to ms or sony, its a win-win for the companies and a fuck you to the customer

 

also i'm sure valve doesn't cut you 50% of the sale for using their system, must be between 25-40% and to add to that, EA with origin gets all the money for their games, they get more that twice per copy for selling a pc game that the console ones

[Guest]

Stick it up your arse Gamestop  B)