"Gamers aren't overcharged, they're undercharged"; New study claims games are too cheap.

[Sauron]

That's retarded. Who says games must be priced according to entertainment hours? Allowing me to play for longer doesn't mean the studio is generating any new content or value, the PLAYERS are. If anything, by that metric, heavily multiplayer focused games should cost LESS, as they often contain fewer assets and story content than games with fleshy single player campaigns.

 

Games should cost the right amount to cover development costs and make a profit. Even if this isn't already the case with 60$ releases, go ahead, raise the price to 80$ or 100$ - write it on the box though, don't try to hide the real price with season passes, day 1 dlc or, even worse, microtransactions with no real upper limit. This "study" is so detached from reality that I doubt anyone involved has ever played a videogame other than candy crush.

[Teddy07]

This analyst is a sellout. Total joke his analyst

[AshleyAshes]

4 hours ago, IKnight said:

He said if a gamer spent $60 for the game, an additional $20 per month for loot micro-transaction boxes and played around 2.5 hours a day for one year, it comes out to roughly 40 cents per hour of entertainment.

Someone want to explain this math to me?  $0.40/hr for a $80 ($60+$20) game would require 200hrs, but 2.5hrs per day for one year is about 912hrs of gameplay.

I mean, this all said, a game that can provide 200hrs of entertainment is a good value, but the majority of gamers don't see 200hrs out of a game.  Me, personally, the only game franchise I typically see hundreds of hours in are the Civilization titles.  And sure, that's why I buy them, because they'll give me hundreds of hours of gameplay but I rarely do over 30-50hrs in any other game, for many I play the story mode once and that's it.

[LAwLz]

13 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Someone want to explain this math to me?  $0.40/hr for a $80 ($60+$20) game would require 200hrs, but 2.5hrs per day for one year is about 912hrs of gameplay.

The shill analysis expects people to pay 20 dollars in micro-transactions every month, not just once.

But the math still doesn't work out really...

(60 + (20*12)) / (2.5*365) = ~0.33

 

So it should be 33 cents per hour.

[Princess Luna]

21 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

.

Best part of it is that the games I also have longer hours played like Civilization myself, The Witcher 3 and so on are all games that does not feature micro transactions, CS:GO would be the only exception but at least in there it is nothing but cosmetic.

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The shill analysis expects people to pay 20 dollars in micro-transactions every month, not just once.

But the math still doesn't work out really...

(60 + (20*12)) / (2.5*365) = ~0.33

 

So it should be 33 cents per hour.

Right, okay, I misread that... But that means we're still talking about 912hrs of gameplay in a year out a single purchase.

 

Okay, kudos to anyone who can squeeze THAT much entertainment out of a single purchase... But who outside of an EXTREME minority gets 900+hrs out of a single game???

[D13H4RD]

Ladies and gentlemen

 

This is what happens when you're too engrossed in the business side that you lose touch with reality.

[ZackBarletto]

I think it depends on the game. I'm in and out of GTA V for maybe a few hours at a time over a month.....

 

HOWEVER, I'm on my *countless* Skyrim profile on countless hours.. What year did that come out again? Oh and i bought it for PS3 first. Then Bought it for PC..... Even starting the clock at reaching the grey beards *first hour or so* I still play she shit out of this game probably more than any other game besides LoL (league of legends).

 

I literally "WASTED" *pun intended* $60 or however much it was on GTA V based off my playing time. Your welcome rockstar

 

But yet getting my moneys worth 10 fold on Skyrim.... EVEN when I bought it twice and not including the same first hour of gameplay... lol

The second purchase for PC was on steam sale but i was getting it anyways.....

 

Its the quality of the game and how much ones likes to play that style or type of game that makes it worth it. Its partially up to the devs to fit that certain style that gravitates their fans to that game. Bethesda kinda did that to me. I don't care what game trailer it is, if i see "Bethesda" in it, I try to look into it to see what its all about because i might like it. I also own Fallout3 for PS3 and PC and fallout 4 for PC and can always go back to those games and get another 8-10 hours in easy.

[bcredeur97]

idk about this... games have cost me almost $2 per hour, but im also a pretty casual gamer.

most people are just casual gamers...

 

 

I thought the whole idea behind gaming was to have something that is somewhat cheap and fun to do when you otherwise have nothing else to do? like watching tv or a movie...

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

This sounds reasonable at first, but in reality it is false. Let's look at EA's financial records shall we?

 

2006

Net revenue - 2.951 billions

Cost of goods sold - 1,181 billion

Gross profit - 1,77 billion dollars

Money spent on development - 0,758 billions

 

2017:

Net revenue - 4,845 billions

Cost of goods sold - 1,298 billion

Gross profit - 3.547 billions

Money spent on development - 1,205 billions

 

 

So from 2006 to 2017 the cost of development increased by 59%, and their gross profit increased by 100%. This whole idea that companies need additional revenue streams is simply not founded in reality.

They make more money now per dollar invested in developing games, so I don't think the whole "it costs more to develop games" argument holds up. Also, we're talking about a company with a gross profit of 3.547 billion dollars. 

They could give each and every of their employee a bonus of 333158 dollars and still make a profit of 1 billion dollars.

 

 

 

Edit:

Another thought I had regarding this, who is to say that movie tickets should be the yard stick for dollar per hour? Maybe it's those things that are overpriced and games are reasonably priced? Movie theaters are not exactly know for being reasonably priced.

 

Edit 2:

Holy crap as someone else pointed out this guy says games are cheap if you spend over 912.5 hours in the game. What about the average game where you might spend ~10 hours? All of a sudden games are expensive and should actually drop in price.

Thanks for grabbing the numbers. As I said in my original quote, there's an interesting discussion about the Point of Sale price and the way companies are generating revenue now. Production costs going up for a product with nearly no-cost to replication is a sign of the higher man-power needed for games these days. (Some of the greatest gaming classics had teams below 10 people.) However, their ability to find more ways to get people paying has clearly run well ahead of that.

 

The rise of F2P MMOs is probably the biggest catalyst, as it changed perspectives on the quality of what "F2P" meant. Took a while before it moved to normal games, but we're definitely there now. Even if Valve has been selling hats for bank for a very long time. (Though I'm still amazed it's EA that has become the gaming villain, and Activision suddenly isn't. Probably because Activision-Blizzard likes their properties to survive.)

[matrix07012]

The guy has direct ties to EA.

 

 

 

[thorhammerz]

If a gamer still has $15 in his pocket, then we charged him $15 less than we should have .

[St4nley]

AAA games are RECYCLED games.
Let me tell you what cost the most in creating a game. Good concept/idea.

And a good concept/idea requires time 

Big companies are skipping this step and milking existing titles. example:
COD_2014 -> COD_2015 -> COD_2016 -> COD_2017 -> ect.
SIMS1 -> SIMS2 -> SIMS3 ->SIMS4 -> ect.
NFS1 -> NFS2  -> NFS3 ->NFS4 -> ect.

 

No shipping Cost (or very very small) and IF developers decide to maintain servers instead of community That is theirs money and business.

 

Well if you guys think that its better to increase Price of the games, then so be it.

Lets see how much sales will drop or increase outside of US and see how Trustworthy is that study.
 

I know for sure that i will vote with my pocket.

[Taf the Ghost]

28 minutes ago, ZackBarletto said:

I think it depends on the game. I'm in and out of GTA V for maybe a few hours at a time over a month.....

 

HOWEVER, I'm on my *countless* Skyrim profile on countless hours.. What year did that come out again? Oh and i bought it for PS3 first. Then Bought it for PC..... Even starting the clock at reaching the grey beards *first hour or so* I still play she shit out of this game probably more than any other game besides LoL (league of legends).

 

I literally "WASTED" *pun intended* $60 or however much it was on GTA V based off my playing time. Your welcome rockstar

 

But yet getting my moneys worth 10 fold on Skyrim.... EVEN when I bought it twice and not including the same first hour of gameplay... lol

The second purchase for PC was on steam sale but i was getting it anyways.....

 

Its the quality of the game and how much ones likes to play that style or type of game that makes it worth it. Its partially up to the devs to fit that certain style that gravitates their fans to that game. Bethesda kinda did that to me. I don't care what game trailer it is, if i see "Bethesda" in it, I try to look into it to see what its all about because i might like it. I also own Fallout3 for PS3 and PC and fallout 4 for PC and can always go back to those games and get another 8-10 hours in easy.

Your children will be buying copies of Skyrim on the next-next-next-next generation of consoles if Todd Howard has anything to do with it.

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, thorhammerz said:

If a gamer still has $15 in his pocket, then we charged him $15 less than we should have .

No, if a gamer has $15 in their pocket then we should have charged an extra $30 and given them a "discount" of $15.

[paddy-stone]

I've an idea.. let's instead do a study of games and the problems associated with it, like long loading times/getting kicked from a server after waiting x minutes/day one patches required etc. Then factor in the associated cost of wasted time when you could be playing instead.

I figure that they should PAY US for the beta testing on a product that's so buggy and shouldn't have been released yet.

[Suika]

The last I checked, the consumer dictates the value of a product through demand, not in competition of other forms of media.

 

If these publishers feel confident, they should increase the prices, but I’m confident that unless it’s an already established franchise, like Call of Duty, the demand is going to drop drastically.

[Tiberiusisgame]

1 hour ago, Ganz said:

I have no problem paying more for something I spend more time in, sure. But that is willingly vs being forced.  I am much more of the attitude that I pay what I think something is worth to me.  If I want to support the Devs I pay more (DLC, MT etc.)  Example I have over 3000 hours in Guild Wars 2.  Bought the game for $45.  Had ~1500 hours before the first expansion and only had an additional $100 or so in cosmetic MT over 3 years.  So I had no problem dropping money on the DLC. 

 

But, to say that games are under priced is outrageous.  90% of games out there you're lucky to get 60 hours out of it.  There's also a lot of other factors that go into gaming that don't go into other forms of entertainment.  Sure, going to the movie theater is more expensive in cost/hr than gaming up front.  But don't forget you need all the tools to play said game at home which you should factor in cost/hr. 

 

I agree that comparing games to movies in silly, but entertaining that idea for a moment, and fleshing out your very good point about needing equipment to play the game, you could make up just about any numbers, right?

 

Say you have a $1000 computer (not counting peripherals) every 3 years to play AAA titles at medium-high settings. That's a completely arbitrary number so let's not get caught up on that. Say it draws ~500 watts from the wall and you play 3 hours a day on the weekdays and 5 hours on the weekends (conservative for my kids brothers, the opposite for the parents on here ;-) ), that's 1300 hours a year, or at say $0.15USD per Kilowatt-Hour ($0.20USD in the EU), that's ~$100USD per year.

 

$1000/3 years + $100/1 year = ~$430/year, not counting the AAA $60USD or greater for the game, not including micro-transactions.

 

That brings some tangible numbers to mind.

[imreloadin]

Sure, raise the prices then and see what happens.

 

I can make a paper airplane and try to sell it for $100 but nobody is going to buy it.

 

I really do like how they quote out the price of seeing a movie in a theater as a comparison. Considering I haven't been to a theater to see a movie in a couple of years primarily due to the fact that the prices have gotten ridiculous I no longer see it as being worth it for the price. I also don't subscribe to cable television as even at the low price of $0.60 an hour or whatever they quoted I still don't find it worth spending my money on.

 

Bottom line is that you can price something however you want but you still have to deal with market forces when it comes to actually selling the product, that is until they can coerce you into paying for it though legislation...

[Ganz]

3 minutes ago, imreloadin said:

Sure, raise the prices then and see what happens.

 

I can make a paper airplane and try to sell it for $100 but nobody is going to buy it.

 

I really do like how they quote out the price of seeing a movie in a theater as a comparison. Considering I haven't been to a theater to see a movie in a couple of years primarily due to the fact that the prices have gotten ridiculous I no longer see it as being worth it for the price. I also don't subscribe to cable television as even at the low price of $0.60 an hour or whatever they quoted I still don't find it worth spending my money on.

 

Bottom line is that you can price something however you want but you still have to deal with market forces when it comes to actually selling the product, that is until they can coerce you into paying for it though legislation...

I agree. Looking at some of the most popular games currently their upfront cost is less than $60 which allows more users to have access, which spreads word of mouth, which gets more people interested....and so on and so forth.  (Games I'm referencing: Overwatch, League of Legends, PUBG, CSGO, Hearthstone)

[RagnarokDel]

considering games used to be physical goods, no they're not.

[imreloadin]

22 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Your children will be buying copies of Skyrim on the next-next-next-next generation of consoles if Todd Howard has anything to do with it.

Well yeah, if people are dumb enough to keep buying it then why the hell wouldn't they keep having it ported?

 

You're telling me that if you were in his shoes that you wouldn't do the exact same thing? It's not like it keeps them from making other new games, they know they still have to do that if they want to keep doing the staying in business thing

 

I'll tell you what would stop that behaviour dead in it's tracks though...people stopped buying it!

[Misanthrope]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Those that bought Skyrim on a Steam sale surely made out like bandits.

At 1848 hours of gameplay clocked for 20 bucks, I'd say so.

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, imreloadin said:

Well yeah, if people are dumb enough to keep buying it then why the hell wouldn't they keep having it ported?

 

You're telling me that if you were in his shoes that you wouldn't do the exact same thing? It's not like it keeps them from making other new games, they know they still have to do that if they want to keep doing the staying in business thing

 

I'll tell you what would stop that behaviour dead in it's tracks though...people stopped buying it!

I didn't say it was wrong, I was just making a joke about it.

[imreloadin]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I didn't say it was wrong, I was just making a joke about it.

Ahh gotcha, thought you were taking the "it's just a screwjob from Bethesda" route that I saw in the other thread about it being ported to the Switch.

 

I've always wondered about people who post stuff like that, maybe they think Todd Howard will be waiting under their beds to get them if they don't buy it for every console they own