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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Would Cheaper Video Games Sell More ?

JazzB1987 said:
sabastian said:
Landguy said:
Won't work.

Even if they dropped the price of the games to $40. Or even $30.

People pay for what they want. If you dropped the price, there wouldn't be millions of more people interested in the game. The people who plan to buy it will, and the people not interested won't.

Sure, when games get extremely inexpensive, they begin to sell to people that will impulse buy them. Developers already have that scenario in their sales plan for the lifecycle of the game.


Huuum ?? So how do you explain impulse iPhone games buy ? 

Example, on the ps3 the custom themes are sold for around $2.99. If they were priced at .99 cents, I would buy more.

Same would apply to me on WiiU Virtual Console games.

I would never ever pay $5 for a NES game rofl.    I would buy 500 NES games for 30cents each tho simply because WHY NOT? ITS CHEAP!.
So Nintendo either gets 500 x $0.3 = $150 or nothing.

(I mean there was the 30 cents promotion for NES and SNES games on WiiU last year that was AWESOME I bought all games but two because I had no internet for a while)

so u want a game to drop to 6% of the price right?



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Most games I buy tend not to be full price. Kinda hard to drop $60 on BioShock Infinite when you know it's probably going to be $20-$30 in a few months. 



sabastian said:
fleischr said:

They do sell more.

Interesting example: Mass Effect 3 on Wii U. Now selling for $10 on Amazon (was $20-30 for the last half of 2013). The game has a lot going against it. Outside the fanbase. It's an old port. Can't move your saves to it. Missing some DLC.

But now that it's selling for less, the sales have spiked considerably. If it continues it's current rate of sales, it'll be up considerably YOY from 2013. It's also outselling the 360 and PS3 version in this time frame (which are currently just a few more bucks more expensive). The only compelling reason to justify that difference is price.

But is EA raking in big money from it? Heck no. Had they priced it this aggressively much earlier on, would they be better off? You tell me!

ME is a pretty solid game.

But on the flip side of your statement, what about the publishers, will they make back enough to justify a sequel ?

It's odd situation.One could easily say, "This game is a loss leader. We lost some money, but it gives us headway towards selling a sequel more successfully to a new customer segment."

Say the game eventually sells half a million and the WiiU now has a larger userbase by that time. You could be alienating a new fanbase if you don't, but you could lose a lot of money if that fanbase doesn't take to game at full or partial retail.

The Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty franchises are in a similar damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016

wolfofthepack said:
JazzB1987 said:
sabastian said:
Landguy said:
Won't work.

Even if they dropped the price of the games to $40. Or even $30.

People pay for what they want. If you dropped the price, there wouldn't be millions of more people interested in the game. The people who plan to buy it will, and the people not interested won't.

Sure, when games get extremely inexpensive, they begin to sell to people that will impulse buy them. Developers already have that scenario in their sales plan for the lifecycle of the game.


Huuum ?? So how do you explain impulse iPhone games buy ? 

Example, on the ps3 the custom themes are sold for around $2.99. If they were priced at .99 cents, I would buy more.

Same would apply to me on WiiU Virtual Console games.

I would never ever pay $5 for a NES game rofl.    I would buy 500 NES games for 30cents each tho simply because WHY NOT? ITS CHEAP!.
So Nintendo either gets 500 x $0.3 = $150 or nothing.

(I mean there was the 30 cents promotion for NES and SNES games on WiiU last year that was AWESOME I bought all games but two because I had no internet for a while)

so u want a game to drop to 6% of the price right?

No I want a game to have reasonable pricing.

I mean I did buy AssassinsCreed3  Farcry3 SleepingDogs HitmanAbsolution TombRaider  DarkSouls and BioshockInfinite for 5 - 7.5€ each.
So why the hell should I pay 5€ for a NES game? NES games should cost $1€.   30cents would simply result in me buying every game because 30 cents is NOTHING.

I would buy some Snes games for 2-3€ but never for 8€ I would also buy some n64 games for 5€ never for 10€. The virtual console game prices are at least twice as expensive as they should be. If Snes games would cost $1€ I would probably buy 100 at once. But since they cost $8€ I wont buy a single one.





JazzB1987 said:
wolfofthepack said:
JazzB1987 said:
sabastian said:
Landguy said:
Won't work.

Even if they dropped the price of the games to $40. Or even $30.

People pay for what they want. If you dropped the price, there wouldn't be millions of more people interested in the game. The people who plan to buy it will, and the people not interested won't.

Sure, when games get extremely inexpensive, they begin to sell to people that will impulse buy them. Developers already have that scenario in their sales plan for the lifecycle of the game.


Huuum ?? So how do you explain impulse iPhone games buy ? 

Example, on the ps3 the custom themes are sold for around $2.99. If they were priced at .99 cents, I would buy more.

Same would apply to me on WiiU Virtual Console games.

I would never ever pay $5 for a NES game rofl.    I would buy 500 NES games for 30cents each tho simply because WHY NOT? ITS CHEAP!.
So Nintendo either gets 500 x $0.3 = $150 or nothing.

(I mean there was the 30 cents promotion for NES and SNES games on WiiU last year that was AWESOME I bought all games but two because I had no internet for a while)

so u want a game to drop to 6% of the price right?

No I want a game to have reasonable pricing.

I mean I did buy AssassinsCreed3  Farcry3 SleepingDogs HitmanAbsolution TombRaider  DarkSouls and BioshockInfinite for 5 - 7.5€ each.
So why the hell should I pay 5€ for a NES game? NES games should cost $1€.   30cents would simply result in me buying every game because 30 cents is NOTHING.

I would buy some Snes games for 2-3€ but never for 8€ I would also buy some n64 games for 5€ never for 10€. The virtual console game prices are at least twice as expensive as they should be. If Snes games would cost $1€ I would probably buy 100 at once. But since they cost $8€ I wont buy a single one.



do u ever think about the cost that comes with these games ?  and also the last i checked u cant get any nes or snes games for $1 to $5 anywhere



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Having a high initial price makes the "value" of the game increse. You imagine you make a bargain when you "only" pay half that price. When the price falls even more the game lands in the bargain bin, and even if it is very cheap compared to the initial price your interest in it is mostly because of its "high" value.
In the movie bargain bin there are a lot of former blockbusters but as the price has not gone down that much (in percent) you tend to dismiss these former masterpieces.



Many of Nintendos games have a high percieved value, this makes it possible for them to price 20 year old games as high as yesterdays blockbusters from Xbox or PS3.



I think it would.



sabastian said:
NiKKoM said:
They would sell more in absolute numbers but the revenue would be down.. The core market is just not big enough to support a low price massive numbers system..


I'm not sure I got your point. Please elaborate more ????

You would create a limit of the maximum copies you can sell at 10 bucks.. say that everyone buys it when the userbase is 50 million at 10 bucks..
500 million in revenue.. you can't sell any more cause there aren't more users..

say you sell 10 million copies at 60 bucks.. thats 600 million but you still have a 40 million userbase who didn't buy the game.. you can still sell more copies..

the userbase for core videogames isn't limitless..



 

Face the future.. Gamecenter ID: nikkom_nl (oh no he didn't!!) 

i think sony/ms should do what they can to make digital distribution advantageous for consumers.   a lot of money would be going back into developers if you cut out the retailer, distribution, and returns.  some of that can go to pulishers and some can go to justifying an price drop to $40.  that should spur increased unit sales which would be good for developers.

furthermore, with the services like xbl and ps+ i think msony should lower their platform royalty.    the more games they can get on their device the more compelling the device becomes.   shifting their business plan to profit on hardware and services moreso than game unit sales should shift to balance of power from mobile back to console for developers looking to profit off of their unit sales.