Video game sales are a trend of up and down, down and up over the past 10 years or so now. Were at the end of one generation, seeing the PS3 selling over 80 million consoles, as well as the XBox360 and the Wii selling well over 90 million units. So in all fairness, any game that is of good to great quality should sell pretty well if its a multi platform release, lets say around 8 million units. But in most cases, its not.

There are tons of multi platform games that are released that bearly sell 3 million copies. Give or take the heavy hitters, GTA, COD, Battlefield, Fifa, NBA2K.

Developers have always cited that they do not make back enough revenue from game sales to make up for the amount of money that was put into the project. For instance, the latest Tomb Raider has sold well over 5 million units hopefully at $60 a pop, yet Square-Enix claims that their projected revenue was not met. I myself do not believe that, but hey, I have no factual numbers to back it up, but it just sounds kind of off.

Me personally I own 2 ps3's, a ps4 and a Vita. I purchase games for all my consoles, but the biggest hurdle for me is pricing of games. Most times I pass on full price $60 games. Skyrim, Bioshock, Tomb Raider, NBA2K, SFIV. I waited for a price drop for all those titles. Only games that I purchase full price day 1 are mostly my favorite series, MGS, Uncharted, God Of War, Killzone and so on. 

I think game are way over priced. $60 is too much for a video game. Video game publishers need to take a cue from the Blu-Ray format. When Blu-Rays 1st got introduced, they were priced at around $30-$40 per movie at most big retailers, Best Buys, Target, Walmart. But even with the great clarity and superior sound, consumers were not willing to pay that much for a movie and within 2 years or so, we saw a huge drop in Blu-Ray prices, to about $19.99- $25.99 per most new releases. And look at Blu-Ray movies now. Their flying off shelves. 

(1)  Should the Video Game industry adopt a new price structure on big budget games ? 

(2) Would big budget new releases priced at $40 sell better than they are selling now ?

(3) Can Handheld games compete with Cell Phone games sales if they were priced at around $19.99 instead of $39.99 ?

As always, Keep on Gaming.

Wii has over 100 million. Anyway it depends on how cheap really.

Absolutely.

The only games I buy full price are nice special/limited editions, everything else, $10-$20 used.

I'd definitively purchase more games if they were cheaper. Alas, I can't afford +35 dollars on most games nowadays.

They do sell more.

Interesting example: Mass Effect 3 on Wii U. Now selling for $10 on Amazon (was $20-30 for the last half of 2013). The game has a lot going against it. Outside the fanbase. It's an old port. Can't move your saves to it. Missing some DLC.

But now that it's selling for less, the sales have spiked considerably. If it continues it's current rate of sales, it'll be up considerably YOY from 2013. It's also outselling the 360 and PS3 version in this time frame (which are currently just a few more bucks more expensive). The only compelling reason to justify that difference is price.

But is EA raking in big money from it? Heck no. Had they priced it this aggressively much earlier on, would they be better off? You tell me!

I'm a big advocate of competitive pricing, and I'm also very frugal. I very rarely buy games full price, and when I do it's only Nintendo games. On every other platform, all you've got to do is wait about a year and you can get a game for twenty bucks.

I think it should depend largely on the game and how much content it has. Skyrim or GTA V have justified price tags. Simpler, shorter games should go as low as $30, especially when they're from lesser known devs or sport more experimental themes. I feel that Nintendo is the biggest culprit of unreasonable prices. I'm of the opinion that any 2D platformer or remastering of a previous game should be no more than 30 or 40 bucks.

They would sell more in absolute numbers but the revenue would be down.. The core market is just not big enough to support a low price massive numbers system..

DONT COMPLAIN, LOOK AT AUSTRALIAS PRICES

INFAMOUS SECOND SON $99

METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES $69

https://ebgames.com.au/ps4/any/preorder

mayabe maybe not cause the people who r saying that games r to expensive right now at $60 would turn around and say the same ting if game prices drop to say $40 as a standard price! this just is life no matter wat price there will always have people saying that is to expensive

yes absolutely.

The movie industry shows us how to do it  they price the movies so low everyone can buy them there is no hurdle like a high price. And if you buy a shitty one you also dont feel burned that bad because it was just 10 bucks.

And since gaming became even more mainstream than movies and alot of games now have 5h campaigns etc selling games for 10 bucks should be enough. (obviously does not apply for great games with 20h - 80h of gameplay etc) We will never go back to developers making games for gamers instead of mainstreamers so pricing the "games" accordingly would just be fair.

I mean you can buy a single song for a few cents or buy a full album for 20bucks or whatever why does the game industry insist on having unified prices for titles of different size/quality etc? It is either 60bucks or indie. Does not make sense