If you factor in inflation they're still cheaper than games have ever been. I can't complain. Nobody's forced to buy at launch, either.

It seems like devs think every game needs to be a AAA huge budget blockbuster these days so they need to sell games at a high price. If games were priced accordingly to budget thenaybe we could have a wider spectrum of game prices. AAA blockbusters can remain $50-60 but genres that dont typically coat as much to make like fighting games, mini game collections, or any mid level budget game should cost $30-40. I would def be more willing to spend $40 on a game that im not sure ill like than $60.

I dont get the whole inflation argument, thats assuming that everybody gets paid more as product prices increase.

Yeah he's right, that's why it don't matter so much on steam, they are so much cheaper there

I disagree.

Segmented pricing is a good thing. Evidently there's a lot of early adopters who are willing to pay $60, then in a few months price drops to $20-40 and the game finds another segment of the market, then lastly there's the second hand market for people who don't want to spend much for a particular game for various reasons.

If you'd price the game at say $30 from the start you wouldn't take advantage of the spending potential of all the people who really value the game as $60.

I like Warren Spector but I more often disagree with him than not.

How can you not get it?

Prices nominally go up due to inflation. This is occuring all the time in the industrialized world everywhere.

If in 1990 a typical small car cost $10,000 but today it costs $15,000 and the meal at McDonalds went from $5 to $7 and the average movie ticket from $6.50 to $9 and the salary for an average worker increased from $2,000 to $3,000, but in the same time the video game remained at $60, then surely the game got relatively cheaper.

Did the average salary go up by that percentage as well? And games cost $50 last gen.

The only truly overcharged games are Call of Duty. Why do they cost 10 euros more than other games upon launch? Moreover, why the hell are people dumb enough to shell out for it?
CoD: Modern Warfare still costs 25 euros at Steam, that's 50% off of the value of a normal game after 5-6 years, Black Ops still costs 60 euros after a November 2011 launch... These are Steam prices by the way, hardly the most expensive store in the world.

Roughly. Of course it depends on the country, but in Sweden it has pretty much gone up by 50% between 1990 and 2013 despite all the crisises and austerities. And I would bet the rate is very similar in the US and the rest of the Western world.

Perhaps the standard price in last gen was $50 but on the other hand games in current gen drop in price very fast in just a few months after launch, and I've read many times that people say games in the Snes era cost $60 if not more. And I know for a fact that the price of games in general (PC as well as consoles) in Sweden has stayed flat since 1995.

Greed.

Anyway. Its not the pricing thats the problem, its the product in general.

When someone falls for the hype and buys a shit game for £40-£50, its gonna piss them off. They lose trust and thus are wary of buying a full price game.

Stop releasing rubbish games. If the game is rubbish, launch it at £30. If the game doesnt have a lot of content, launch it at £30.