Are you complaining that SC is $10 more expensive? Personally, I got easily 20x more playability from SC, than from any other one-time purchase of it's time. The only other games I've played even close to as much were MMO's with monthly fees. SC is a bargain at $60, or even $100. I don't understand the logic that all games must be the same price. I could see if it was some 6 hour single player game, but this is SC! Outside of video games/movies people realize that a top tier item costs more... I don't see the issue.

Are you complaining that SC is $10 more expensive? Personally, I got easily 20x more playability from SC, than from any other one-time purchase of it's time. The only other games I've played even close to as much were MMO's with monthly fees. SC is a bargain at $60, or even $100. I don't understand the logic that all games must be the same price. I could see if it was some 6 hour single player game, but this is SC! Outside of video games/movies people realize that a top tier item costs more... I don't see the issue.

-- An exclusive 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor's dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War(R) expansion set

basically the entire first game with expansion, so yes i am going to say Brood Wars and where the heck do you shop to have bargain bin PC games?

Walmart still has the battle chest for $20

I think you have your priorities all sorts of fucked up.

See the way I think of it, SC should be $50, and then all the shit shooters that have been coming out should be about $30. With MW2 giving you money to play it.

I mean hell, if this was the case I bet you piracy would have been a hell of a lot less, evethough it seems it's not really affecting the industry according to some studies.

If they price this at over $50, I better not hear them bitch about piracy. I will go and slap them across their idiotic faces if they do.

I'm more irritated that in order to play the whole game, I'm going to have to shell out $180.

Maybe you should do a little research into the business side of things before declaring how much stuff should cost. A lot of new game releases lose money, even at the $50 price tag. Lowering the price substantially reduces their profit margin - stores aren't going to sell the game for a substantially reduced profit margin, which means the developer and publisher have to eat the entire hit. Which means suddenly a solid game could sell 2 million copies and barely break even. 

SC2 had been in development for over half a decade, it's had a massive budget, and it will continue to receive updates for the forseeable future. It's one of few worth more than they charge for it.

As for piracy being "a lot less" it would have to be. If games cost half as much, they would need to sell more than 3x the copies to break even. Unless it magically not only eliminated piracy, but forced every pirate to buy a copy at full price, you're making a statement that, if it happened, would drive most PC developers out of business.

They're charging $60 for an ultra-top tier AAA product, and you think that justifies piracy? An idiot face certainly needs a slap, but it's not theirs.

I think that there's a big misunderstanding out there that blizzard is planning to release 1/3 of a game and charge full price for it. Lets clear this up: The vision they had for SC2 was huge. So huge. much bigger than SC + Brood War. Much more than... 1 game's worth of content, by anyone's standards. Now, they coudl let us wait 3 or 4 more years while they achieved that dream, but we've waited 12 years already. They are releasing a complete game, no question. The ones coming down the line are expansions, and just like brood war added 30 new missions, as well as breathing tons of new life into the multiplayer, these will do the same.

Now, since you'd have to wait 4 years to get the entire package anyway, you're free to do so, and by then the prices of the first 2 would have come down substantially. But for now, you're getting "the whole game" for $60. SC will have more playability than 99% of what releases, and quite frankly, even if it was part of 1 bigger game, if they made 1 massive game, over the course of 10 years, with way more replayability than 10 average games combined, isn't it still a good deal? How many franchises release a new game every 2 or 3 years? Blizzard is doing the same, they just aren't incrementing the number after the title.

(Also, from what they said, the next installments may be completely different - including RPG/shooter aspects that will make them entirely different experiences)

You see that's the problem. The worth of those games is most definitely less than the set $50. New game releases lose money because a lot of new games just suck, in fact many that make a profit these days deserve to lose money because they also just suck. If I spent $50 on XCOM, Deus Ex, SC1, WC3, and many other titles, some of which will probably be still better than SCII, then there is no reason for SCII to cost more than them. If it is a good game, it will sell just fine, if it isn't then that is the developer's problem, not the consumers'.

You're out on a limb here. You're assuming, by default, that SC2 isnt' going to be as good as a pack of games with a much shorter development time and budget. Not only that, you're not factoring in inflation. SC2 is going to cost easily 4-10x as much to develop as it's predeccessor. That could qualify as a reason to cost more. Inflation brings down the value of money around 3% a year, and it's releasing 12 years later. That's a reason to cost more. It's a good game, and it will sell fine. Inflation, development costs, and piracy are all the developer's problem, and they must pass it onto consumers. They run a business, not a charity. You know, we can see this attitude in some old people who complain that things are too expensive, because back in their day it used to cost 5 cents for a burger. Guess what? That was a long time ago. Minimum wage is higher, average wages are higher, costs are higher, and now the cost of SC2 is higher. 

The medium of video games is just like paintings. You will hardly find anyone charge more than a Picasso painting, or god forbid a da Vinci. Why is that? Because they are of lower quality. Saying "oh yeah I'll pay more for this new age painting" is absolutely retarded. You are just a bad consumer if you do that. The same reasoning is why most current games should be around the $25 mark, not the $60.

That's backwards though. You're setting the cost of a davinci, and saying "well, I think this Da Vinci is worth $XXX, making this new painting clearly worth less." But guess what? a Da Vinci is priceless, and it will go for a fortune. To complain about it's price, because YOU are accustomed to buying(or stealing) new age paintings (whose price you also complain about), means that you're the one with no concept of the true value of them item. You only have a concept of what you want to spend on it. And Surprise! It's less. If you think $60 is too much, then don't buy it. Just like someone with no appreciation of art can complain that a Da Vinci costs too much, someone with no concept of the time, effort, and money that goes into a release of this magnitude can complain about a $60 price tag.

Your problem is that you are trying to shoehorn the price of SCII to the already broken model of pricing. That is not how it works. What should happen is that the title should try to fix the problem. Anchor it at $50 and any worse games than it should cost less than it. I can't believe people exist that actually want to throw their money away.

Not at all. We are VERY fortunate to have SC2 in this pricing model. I'm getting more time/enjoyment out of just playing in the multiplayer beta than I have in 90% of the fully priced games I've bought in the last few years. (with a few exceptions, like the Mass Effect games) If StarCraft existed outside the pricing model, it would cost $100, because people would pay it, and because it's worth it. This is the first game in years that will provide hundreds(or thousands for many) of hours of replayability. Your problem is that you look at a game as an absolute. 1 game is worth X, an amazing game worth 2X. There are plenty of games I don't consider work $5... I don't buy them. And there are games which are worth way more than their price, and I have no problem with paying a few extra dollars to encourage their continued development and high quality standards. I'm not looking to "throw my money away." I pay for quality - I'd rather pay $100 for 1 game like SC2, than get 5 mediocre games for $20 each.

I don't know how much you have been keeping up with piracy, but most recent economic theory suggests that people want to pay for things, albeit a fair price. Piracy arises when someone wants something, but they feel its value is significantly less than what is asked for it. There are two ways to fix this situation. The developers lower the prices of their shittier games, or they they make their shittier games be worth the price they are asking. As a side note, PC developers who are releasing quality games have absolutely no problems. Heck, they don't even have to release "da best" to make money, as shown by recent Total War and Dawn of War releases. PC games only lose money to piracy when they are bad games.

Well, I suppose if it's a "theory" then it must be true. Let me supplement things with a fact - people want to buy things, but everyone wishes what they were buying was cheaper than it is, even if they're already getting a good deal. Piracy arises when people decide they DESERVE to own something, but base it's value on arbitrary numbers they come up with to justify it. You have already, in your prior post, given your arbitrary number that justifies piracy (>$50). Yet you do this without so much as a demo of the final product with which to gauge it's value. It doesn't matter to you if SC2 cost the dev 10x as much to make, and is 10x better than any other game. $>50 is too much. Period. It's good to know that developers who release quality games have "absolutely no problems." I guess some of my favorite developers of the past, which have now folded up, simply didn't deliver quality products.

totally see the value in it.  I shouldn't have said I was irritated by it.  It's just a lot of money to shell out, especially considering that I need to get a new video card as well, since I doubt it will be very playable on my X600.