I was theorizing earlier about the status of console gaming, given the severe slowdown in sales in Japan, fluctuating economy, and just consumer interest overall.
I'm wondering how many people readily run out and drop $50-$60 on a game these days. Between being able to buy a game used for cheaper via Gamestop or Ebay and waiting for a game to hit the bargain bin, gamers have ways of getting around the big price tag.
Many months ago, I posted a question about how many people would buy a game if it cost $10 new. The response was pretty good. I wonder if the difference in selling a $50 game to a reluctant crowd vs selling a game for $10 to a more open/experimentive crowd would be.
Let's say that a game for $50 sells to 200K people, that's $10 mil in sales. If a $10 game can get the interest of a million people, that's the same amount of sales. What would make the gap be so large in the population buying the game? The price, of course. People tend to be more open about dropping $10-$20 on a game than $50.
Of course, through a $10 process, you'd need to publish the game yourself, to reduce overhead and the profit pie being split up. At the end of the day, the dev might see $20-30 of that $50 game, so backtracking, the dev would make $4-6 mil off of that deal.
At the end of the day, a game is not measured in dollars, but how many people actually bought the game and are playing it. What makes popular games popular? Revenue earned, or how many people are playing it online/offline.
Maybe it is time for a shift to making cheaper games and supporting the community that supports the developers.
Thoughts?
