http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56096

"As a collector, I can relate to people who enjoy buying a game and having the game box, and manual. However, paying only 800 points ($10) for a game as nice as 'Bionic Commando: Rearmed' or 1200 points ($15) for a game as big as 'Castle Crashers' seems ridiculous to me."

"Microsoft does not allow for user-defined price points like 799 points or even 100 point increments like 500, 600, 700, etc. For a bigger game like 'Weapon of Choice,' only having two options, one of which is double the first option, makes the decision difficult. I felt like we could have priced the game at 600 points and received no backlash from consumers as they compare our game to other downloadables."

It's true, I always wondered why most games are priced about the same.

why not some at 200 points, 300, 400, 500 . . . ?

downloadable games underadvertised


The price is right, bitch.

I'd buy a lot more at 200 points a pop.
I get my aracade games much cheaper buy buying the occational compilation disc. If I can't do that, I tend not to buy.

Has anyone been looking through the community games?

I think 800 points for a community game is a hard sell. 600 points, might have been alright. But I have a bad feeling the community games section is a ghost town.

Weapon of Choice is a great game, based off the demo. There is a few other great titles worth a look. Maybe I list some later.

Anyone want to give your impressions of the community games section and any of it's games?

I can't really agree. Gamers already balk at $15 for awesome games like Castle Crashers or Braid. I think the bigger problem is that the downloadable services really haven't taken off yet. Some percentage of console users aren't even going online yet, and I'd guess others are put off by lack of storage or a dislike of not owning the physical media. Not many games have hit 1 million downloads on any service. The only XBLA games that have, IIRC, are the freebies.

I also hate the idea of user defined prices. 799 points? Fuck that. It'd be one thing if we were using real money ($9.98, say), but I think I'd be more reluctant to shell out for something that's got an odd point value than for something I think is overpriced. Seems to be splitting hairs, anyway. If a game isn't worth 800 points, is it worth 799?

I think every game ever has been overpriced by $10-$30. This guy's nuts.

Meh. I could not justify mysefl to buy a game like braid (for example) for 1200 points. You could get a xbox original for that price.

this guy is crying because he cant jack up the price on the game he made with XNA???

i have gotten a number of retail games for less than the price of some of these downloadable games.  very few can even take on some of the bad retail games.  i dont think any compete with the better ones. you see Saints Row, Crackdown, Blue Dragon, Viva Pinata, or Kameo for 800 points...you going to choose one of them or one of the arcade games?

There are 2 things wrong with how XBLA/XBCG/XBO handles pricing of titles:

1) Prices aren't flexible (as per Nathan's argument)
2) Not a big enough selection of 'big' and 'smaller' games. The vast majority of titles are $10. Some aren't worth it, some are worth more. Microsoft needs to take the quasi-Sony route and allow for bigger, better games to be downloadable.

An issue is that, for consumers, it's hard to compare the value of a game like Audiosurf to Halflife on Steam (both are the same price), or N+ to Screwjumper (both are the same price). This may me skewing sales, since some pricing models just aren't flexible.

FYI - The guy complaining is Former Insomniac Games developer Nathan Fouts
I think he's the one who created the weapons for the first Resistance..