Warner Bother: Jimquisition takes a stab at WB

[MikeRox]

Nem said:

MikeRox said:

I guess there is kind of the side though, that games cost more to make, everybody expects more from them, but nobody at all is prepared to pay any extra for them, and they're actually cheaper now than they have ever been, because the RRP of a game has been forced to remain pretty much static for 20 years but the actual market the games are being sold to is no longer growing at the pace to support this.

I guess WB in some ways are trying to find the middle ground. Just to play devils advocate to this whole "we're being massively ripped off" malarky.

You are giving them way too much leeway. Development costs rose 10% with this gen compared to the last. In europe at least, new games are released for 70 euros instead of 60. The launch prices in general went up for all new titles on the new consoles. The extra on top of that is taking the piss. They are taking advantage and they are pushing to see with how much they can get away with.

The guys in the US may be having a better time if they still get games for 60 dollars.

I'm UK. I just know that the general price for a home console game was:

4th gen £44.99
5th gen £44.99
6th gen £39.99 (cartridge games £49.99-£59.99)
7th gen £39.99
8th gen £39.99

Inflation between 1990 and now means that even if NES games were £39.99 (as most games generally retail for now) you'd expect to pay £88.99 for the game today. You don't see people complaining to the same extent that Mars Bars were 25p in the 90s but now you'd be expected to pay about 75p in most shops.

So actually the cost of new games has halved in real terms and that's without considering that it takes far more people to make those games now than it did before.

Luckily much bigger userbases had been offsetting this. This is how we ended up needing games to sell millions to break even while 100,000 on the NES would be the big time.