Cliff Bleszinski: Industry turmoil worst since '80s crash

[theRepublic]

Stinky said:

theRepublic said:

"That means $20 horror games, $40 shooters, $60 AAA blockbusters, free-to-play, and everything in between, all easy to find for the audience who would be most interested in them."

It would be about time. I have no idea why the video game industry has been so rigid in its pricing structure.

It seems to be publishers who drive the pricing structure, but it's not so cut and dried. Games like Deadly Premonition launched with realistic pricing and sold decently because of it. I'll give this gen one thing, the rise of download games really took off and we now have a nicely-tiered budget market, which has been kind of absent since the old days of Mastertronic 1.99 range and so forth. The quality of download titles is also very good.

So I think the main roadblock with publisher pricing is physical media, which is a production risk.

It has been a bit better this generation, I agree.  I still don't see nearly enough retail games starting out with the lower price point though.  Usually it comes down to a price cut.

There is a cost associated with the physical production and distribution of retail games.  From the breakdowns I've seen, it is around $4 dollars per game.  So it really is not that much.