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Forums - Gaming - current video game pricing model is outdated

Wagram on 18 October 2010
Pyro as Bill said:

Drop the 5-15-40hr long storybooks and value replayability over the temporary badassery you felt.

Then and only then do games blow every other entertainment medium out of the water $/hr.

Some modern gamers scoff when they hear people paid the equivalent of £100-$200 for a 16bit game like Street Fighter 2. What they fail to understand is that, at the time, SF2 and others had far more replayability than the 40hr long(tops) dogshit that is served up these days.

I'd be insulted to have some storybook-one time play game like Bioshit on the same shelf, at the same price, as a CoD, WoW, Halo, Kart etc...... and then they have the cheek to complain about used games.


Rut Roh raggy! I'll see ya after your ban. Well I suppose it depends on if a moderator likes Bioshock.



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SaviorX on 18 October 2010
Pyro as Bill said:
haxxiy said:
Pyro as Bill said:

I'd be insulted to have some storybook-one time play game like Bioshit on the same shelf, at the same price, as a CoD, WoW, Halo, Kart etc...... and then they have the cheek to complain about used games.


If you don't like Bioshock that's your problem only sir, and you should keep your insults to yourself. Mind you that people might have similar opinions about the games you praise and obviously prefer. Would you like to hear them speaking their minds? I guess not.

Oh, we don't insult games we dislike on forums anymore? Sorry, I didn't get the memo.

You could've gone about it a little better, but yea I wasn't crazy about Bioshock either...



Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. "  thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."

Gnizmo on 18 October 2010

I would probably just stop gaming under your terrible idea of the future. Your terrible comparison is pretty off-base so I will counter with another! Imagine if cars worked on your system, and the only way to drive one was to essentially rent it perpetually at whatever insane cost automakers decided. You could no longer get a cheap workable car for $500 once because they simply would not be offered. Instead you could get a selection of new ones for $500 a month whether you could realistically afford it or not, and lose it all together if the company folds. No thanks.

I don't like to rent all my games. I like to buy them to play later. I like to go back years later and be able to enjoy playing an old game that could be gone forever under your model. Such arrangement exist already in the form of OnLive, and GameFly. The concept of eliminating retail sales all together would be disastrously bad.

Edit: Oh and I agree that Bioshock was a terrible game, but that was the worst way to phrase it. There are better ways to point out how the combat was bad, the story telling lacking, and the general pace of the game is awful. I suppose I gave an example of how right here!



Starcraft 2 ID: Gnizmo 229

voty2000 on 18 October 2010
haxxiy said:
voty2000 said:

And no, it's not reasonable pricing structure.  Developers are already having trouble making money as it is and doing your structure would cripple the industry.  Say I buy 3 games a month, that's $180.  You want people to pay $50 a month, making companies lose $130 of profits.  This month I have played $240 worth of games.  That's $190 companies will lose, it would never work.  The only thing plausible is to have each publsiher have their own pricing system, so you'd buy an EA, Activision, MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc... monthly subscription and the cost would be ridiculus, especially if you don't play many games that month, like last month, I only beat 1 game.

3 games per month is well over the average. Let's say a console is actively used for gaming just during about three years. The average gamer would buy a game less than every three months.of use and that's using an end of generation attach rate of 10.

Companies would profit over the average gamer $1800 after three years in software alone. That's triple the ammount of an attach rate of less than $600. It would be much better to them. Of course I could see them agreeing in something like that only if profits are properly split by the popularity of the games.

But the gamers that only buy 1 game every three months won't pay a monthly subscriptions fee.  Instead of 1 $60 purchase they'd have to pay $50 per month which would be $150, it wouldn't be worth it, and to be able to play the game whenever they want, they would be forced to keep paying the monthly fee. 

The biggest problem is the distribution of money gained from the subscription service.  When a game like Modern Warfare 2 comes out, that game will demand a huge chunk of the subscription fees that month, so smaller companies will get hosed.   With a subscription fee each company will be fighting over a set amount of money(subscription fee) so if a month goes by with only a few decent sellers, everyone wins, but when a game like GTA 4 for NSMBWii, those games will take a huge chunk of the money and leave smaller companies fighting over the scraps.