Are games today really worth the asking price?

[mike_intellivision]

CChaos said:

mike_intellivision said:
I love how people use Angry Birds as the epitome of what can be done for a buck.

I subscribe to "Apps Gone Free" and almost everything there is not worth the price that is charged on that day -- which is nothing. (For example, Angry Birds Seasons was included and my son's reaction was ''Delete it" -- and full Angry Birds is $3 on an iPad, BTW).

...

As much as people get a chuckle (or, in some cases, just get outraged) off of the Angry Bird comparisons that a lot of folks use, it's actually pretty valid. It is now THE example given to a lot of developers that you CAN and DO make money off of mobile device gaming. Angry Birds is the 'pulled yourself up by your bootstraps' success story that tended to fill the early days of computers and gaming and what not. The fact that the gameplay gets boring after like three minutes is completely irrelevant in the monetary scope. It shows that there is a market for dollar games and that they are able to reach the types of numbers for casual gamers that well surpasses typical console gamers.

I mean, it goes down to basic numbers...

Total Number of Combined Wii, 360 and PS3: About 230m.

Total Number of iPhones: Just under 200m (obviously higher if you include iPads).

Total Number of Android Devices: Above 250m.

Angry Birds is now doing well enough that their company is larger, there are Angry Birds toys invading toy stores and they even hired a guy to start putting together an Angry Birds movie. You can't do this on peanuts, so they're obviously doing pretty well. And that's what companies see, not 'is the game interesting at all?' or 'could I still play this if my brain was not a brain, but a bundle of basic nerve cells that twitch occasionally?'. This is why all of these groups are running to get as many iOS and Android games out as possible, even if 99.9% of them are absolutely horrific piles of shovelware.

But, to the original question: I haven't bought a full priced game in years, because I don't want to spend $50 to $60 on one. I just wait for Steam sales.

To go completely off-topic, Angry Birds is a wonderful success story. But it (a) is too often interpreted as the norm rather than an outlier and (b) on the verge of becoming over-exposed and passe' in my opinion (at least).

 

Mike from Morgantown