Whatever happened to "Platinum Sellers for $19.99"? At one time, almost every company offered their top titles for $19.99, and every third party game that reached that milestone made it to that prestigious price point. Now, only select few, or those that have slowed down in sales to a point that your grandmother would have to slow down in her walker to see the cover art. 63 for the 360 (11 First Party), 50 games for the Wii (17 First Party), and 30 games for the PS3 (9 First Party). I may be wrong, but I believe that once you reach that point of 1 million sales on one game, you have made more than 10 times the cost of production. Bottom line is more Platinum Sellers helps sell consoles - (Think Mom or Dad buying a console for their kid and seeing a wall full of games that cost $19.99) and it also helps us gamers who are hurting during this recession.

Lol. Sorry. HD production costs have sky rocketed. Why are so many game dev companies in some financial trouble? HD Production costs. They need to make as much money off of sales as they can to recoup and reinvest that money into new projects that cost, a lot of money.

Well, the PS3 has the Greatest Hits at $30 and the 360 has platinum hits at $30 as well.

Only Ninty dont offer any...

Shovelware doesn't count, and please no flame wars.

The following X360 titles have gone Platinum many times over!!!!, I don’t own an X360 (wish I did though) this is just a small example from one company. I chose X360 because of them having an astounding 11 games out of 63 Platinum titles that are First Party…that’s less than 6 percent. Pretty good numbers actually. Anyway:

Halo 3 (Ready For This?????) NINE…..9 TIMES Platinum http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=63851 39.99

Gears of War 2 ……… Four times Platinum http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=69459  59.99

Fable II …… Going on 3 times Platinum http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=70785 39.99

With Halo alone going 9 times Platinum you would think they would be doing well enough to warrant some “real” price drops especially with Gears of War 2. And yes I do understand they are still trying to recoup millions if not billions lost from the X360 Hardware itself due to price competition, but don’t pass that onto those people who bought your console and your games.

Gears of war 2 and Fable 2 are still somewhat "new" games, I don't see a classic-version coming any time soon. Halo 3 is available as classics.

Esa-Petteri said: Gears of war 2 and Fable 2 are still somewhat "new" games, I don't see a classic-version coming any time soon. Halo 3 is available as classics. Exactly my point, Instead of waiting for a game to hit the prestigious 1 million mark, we wait for Quintuplet Platinum before we are to see a price drop on a GOOD game. Why not tiers that knock off 5 dollars for every million hit, the game publishers took that (for some) long awaited price drop from us. I have a Nintendo Wii that my brother had gotten for me and my children (I couldn’t afford us one), and to wait to play these games at a price I can afford kills me and my children. I know “buy it used from gamestop” for what five dollars less!, or “Ebay” cost of shipping alone is more than the game. Point is there are some killer games that have made the publishers and designers tons of money, if not for the Platinum’s what would people like myself and my family do?

Platinum games (and counterparts) historically had to pass a certain number of sales within 1 year. The number of sales has been anywhere from 250k-1m units. Typically a game won't go platinum until at least 1 year on the market.

However, just because a manufacturer offers a platinum range of games does not mean that all games that meet the criteria will be platinum right away. Why waste profit on a game when it is still selling well? If everyone knows the price will drop within 1 month, why buy now when you can save $10 later on a brand new game?

In your case, I'd look at some of the best overlooked games that can be found really cheap, like Super Paper Mario and Wario Land: Shake It!

if you go here, this is a great site for finding used games cheap. You can sort by price by clicking the column header and there are tons of good games for $25 or less.
http://www.videogamepricecharts.com/console/wii

EDIT: some more great games for $25 or less

Metroid Prime 3
Mario Super Sluggers
de Blog
New Play Control Pikmin
Klonoa
Excite Truck
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
Rayman Raving Rabbids (1 & 2)
Mario Strikers Charged
The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return
Okami
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition
Truama Center: New Blood
Truama Center: Second Opinion
Zack & Wiki
Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga
Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
No More Heroes

Well, how soon those earlier platinum games were out? 6 months after release or something? I doubt that.

If that last question was for me.. If you can't afford something, then live without it. That is the way life goes. I want a cool Ferrari that I could afford but it is not happening. :O

Or you could just.. buy those games online.