The average price of Xbox Live Arcade games is increasing, a Microsoft executive has claimed.

Xbox Live Arcade portfolio director Chris Charla admitted that the average price for an Xbox Live Arcade game has increased in line with a rise in quality.

"If you look at Live Arcade, and do the math, and look at the publicly available sales numbers, you can see that average prices on XBLA have crept up over the last few years, which has been an interesting trend because on some app markets there's been a race to zero as fast as possible," he told GamesIndustry.biz.

"We've seen a little bit of the opposite happening. I don't really know where prices are going to go - ultimately, that's set by the market - but it has been really gratifying to see that people are willing to pay a premium price for digital content."

Charla added: "I think the games that we're shipping - a Limbo or a Castle Crashers - are as good as anything on the market."

So far this year, 20 Xbox Live Arcade games have been confirmed at 1200 Microsoft points, a figure likely to rise with five months' worth of releases still to come.

In 2009, 21 of the 86 games released were priced at 1200 Microsoft Points, while last year 27 of 85 titles cost 1200 MS Points.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a331293/xbox-live-arcade-games-cost-more-says-microsoft-executive.html

Bigger demand now so increase in price?

Ya pretty much developers now see that games sold on xbla can turn quite the profit.

if they start pricing at 1600 again they will regret it. if things were cheaper i would buy more....as it is i usually wait for dotw on most everything.

I usually will wait for the DOTW to buy any XBLA games...only the ones that are really high quality that I like will I buy at the full price especially if they are priced at 1200 MS points.

Use your wallet and be the judge. Most arcade games aren't worth $15. Actually looking at the amount of arcade titles I bought this year probably has to do with the $15 tag. I wanted Hard Corps but there was no way I was going to spend $15 on it. The only game I spent $15 on was Torchlight - heavy in content and great in quality. I will be buying SF3 cause I'm a huge fighting game fan, but from a casual standpoint It will not be worth $15. If the game is not AAA for a arcade title or a solid FPS (which is what the XBox market likes, I'm sure Section 8 sold well) It's probably not going to sell at $15, but would be better priced at $10 (and WTF happended to 400 point games? Outside of Ninj 2 Jump and salesI haven't seen a 400 pt game in over a year)

games do get better though in general.... I think 15 bucks is not that big of deal for games like castle vania, aqua, bastion, hydrophobia etc..... but even though I agree it's not that expensive considering what you get... I also wait for the good deals to get them :D but that's more because I have a lot of games to finish so these can wait especially since I don't play them the same way since they have no resell value.... it's more like I buy them when a good deal comes and I play them when I'm bored of the rest.... when I need a break or a quick fix or when friends or the GF are playing cause most of the time the gameplay is way easier to pick up fast....

They do this so that when they start slashing prices for Gold members, it gives people the idea that they are special.. ~_n

if the price of the game is inline with the quality the 1200 MS points should be no problem.

thats wht demos are for although there not always provided.