Gamestop president:"Digital games are too cheap"

[Briggsy]

President of Gamestop.... that title has about as much weight behind it as president of blockbuster.

[ComradeHX]

$60 isn't bullshit for a video game. I remember in the 80s paying $30 for NES games that could be developed by a few people in a few months. Factoring in inflation, those games were a little more expensive than modern AAA games that have huge development, art, and QA teams and take years to make. It always blows me away that we only pay $60 at launch for the quality of games we have now. I think we have it pretty good.

Technology moves on.

We should be getting more for same price, naturally...

[asker509]

Man I wish psn store and the other console stores would sell digital games cheaper

[mr moose]

Well, in their defense they do provide kids with jobs, jobs in an industry that at least doesn't suck like working at McDonald's.  If people didn't buy from EB (gamestop in Aus.) my brother in law wouldn't have a job and thus wouldn't be going of to uni next year.

[shadowblitz3]

thats just pure greed

[That Norwegian Guy]

Here's the deal: there are more games than wallets to buy them. And the amount of people getting into game development every year is rising at a percentage greater than the increase in gamers and game consumers. Of course the cost of games is going down. There are many indies out there capable of delivering top quality games for less than half the price of one of the shitty, unfiniished, focus-tested, soulless triple-A hollywood discharges, so the needle head for getting through with these $60 games is extremely narrow, pretty much only the highest-integrity developers and publishers will be allowed to survive in the future unless they change the pricing to what their games are worth.

 

Hell, to this day, it's not the $275 purchase for lifetime subscription on The Secret World I regret (worth every penny) or my $1250 spent on Star Citizen, it's the $5 Steam sale purchases of empty crap that used to be $60 like Just Cause 2, Metro 2033, Crysis 2 etc.

 

 

Besides, the more obsolete publishers that shrivel up and die, the better.

[Roddy189]

I don't see how pre-owned games help the video game industry in any way (except for the stores obviously) I'm surprised it's not illegal really (not saying that that's what I want ofc)

Why don't they try to contend with steam, EA, and Ubisoft and other online retailers? You can't just moan about how your business plan is shit and expect daddy to fix it for you, you need to act if you want a business to continue.

[Doobeedoo]

Old pos

[fojacko]

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.

To counter that last point, there are way more people playing video games now, than back in 95, playing video games then would mean you're a "nerd" or a "geek". Now its weird to find someone who doesn't play video games. So the decrease in price really shouldnt matter considering the immense increase in playerbase.

[Lord Baal]

Gamestop/EB Games needs to die already I dislike them more then Ubisoft. Around here all they do is hire young semi attractive women who know nothing about gaming and overcharge on pretty much everything after driving out any competition in the area. Don't like digital distribution then maybe you shouldn't have included selling used games and pushing people to buy them over the new ones for like $5 less where the publishers and developers make no money and you make all the profit into your business model leaving publishers little other option but to come up with a way to sell their games to the public cutting you out.

[Jackgamer91]

Who still shops at Gamestop? Honestly? I'm not paying $40 for a used game in a slimy case. 

[rentaspoon]

He does make a decent point, super cheap AAA games aren't sustainable and will lead to lower quality.

In that case they need to drop the price because they are already poor quality

I'm sure they would profit more if they dropped the prices slightly