EA Outs Battlefield 4, Plans To Charge $70 For New Games [Slashdot]

[Leo_A]

I used it as an example starting point from 1982. Colecovision had games for $29.99 and so did the NES when it first game out. I personally went to the store and bought these games in 1987 for $29.99 each new. Popeye and Donkey Kong Junior as examples. The prices have ranges generally from $29.99 to $59.99 and SNES went up to 69.99 for some games, a handful at 79.99 (not MSRP) and Genesis had two 99.99 games. Specifically cartridge we are talking about.

Good job saying I don't know anything about pricing on the games though especially since I used that as a standardized example from the 80s.

You were treated merely in the same manner you routinely talk down to other people at this forum (Including in this thread).

That said, I wonder just what your point was then if you were averaging such a large range of price points over the years. Weren't you trying to claim that console gamer's are like arcade gamer's and expect to pay the same prices they were paying 20 & 30 years ago?

For that to be the case, you do realize the prices would have to be fairly close to each other over that time period? Yet I think the historical record points to that being anything but the case where console game prices are concerned. There has been a wide variance over the years and fluctuations both upwards and downwards.

In other words, anything but a standard pricepoint for 30+ years.

[Bojay1997]

The team salaries and overall upkeep of entire real estate is had on some of these releases. Companies really didn't bother with that much back then and most places had small staffs and modest offices. Now you have places with million dollar suites and 60 people on a team making $70K a year average not to mention the regular costs of equipment and all that. One bad sale for a game can turn a company around to almost nothing (Midway, THQ, etc) though I understand the physical media aspect is an issue and down the line digital content is going to be replacing most if not all contect for new systems it still doesn't make sense for consumers to expect to pay less for games that cost more to make now than they did back in the 80s/90s; and as I said, a lot of that really boils down to how many people work on these games and the small window they have to sell them. The companies are not "making" $50-60 per game sold, they sell wholesale like anyone else and if they sell 1,000,000 copies of a game at their sale price of $35 apiece or so to distributors; etc $35Million is not a lot of money these days especially considering not every game can reach the 1,000,000 mark. It is profitable but it's a tough market.

I'm sorry, but that's just not very relevant. Take a look at the net revenue/profit numbers for Activision in 2011. They did over a billion dollars in profit. That means that after all of those salaries were paid and offices were paid for and every other expense was taken out, they still cleared a billion dollars. Sure, not every company is Activision, but if you look at the financials for the successful companies, they are delivering record profits even in a very deep recession. So, would I agree that it costs more to make some larger scale games today than five or ten years ago? Absolutely. Do games have to go up to $70 to keep companies afloat? Absolutely not.

[TonyTheTiger]

Now you have places with million dollar suites and 60 people on a team making $70K a year average not to mention the regular costs of equipment and all that. One bad sale for a game can turn a company around to almost nothing (Midway, THQ, etc).

The question is, though, "Who's fault is that?"

Video games are not movies. Movies can get away with costing hundreds of millions to produce because of many different revenue streams. After movie tickets there are home releases, then more home releases on whatever the new format may be, and constant TV airings. Even box office duds can wind up in the black overall thanks to this. Movies keep making money. Games generally don't. That's why there's such a sequel fetish. Because while Universal can reap the benefits of seeing Back to the Future air on TBS once a week, Square Enix has to get off its ass and make a brand new Final Fantasy every so often.

It's like the industry wants to pretend skyrocketing development costs are some kind of inevitability. "Games cost a lot on the shelf because they cost so much to make" without ever questioning why the latter part of that is such a necessity. It doesn't have to be. In fact, it shouldn't be. The fact that one big flop can be so catastrophic shows just how unsustainable it is.

[Gameguy]

The team salaries and overall upkeep of entire real estate is had on some of these releases. Companies really didn't bother with that much back then and most places had small staffs and modest offices. Now you have places with million dollar suites and 60 people on a team making $70K a year average not to mention the regular costs of equipment and all that. One bad sale for a game can turn a company around to almost nothing (Midway, THQ, etc) though I understand the physical media aspect is an issue and down the line digital content is going to be replacing most if not all contect for new systems it still doesn't make sense for consumers to expect to pay less for games that cost more to make now than they did back in the 80s/90s; and as I said, a lot of that really boils down to how many people work on these games and the small window they have to sell them. The companies are not "making" $50-60 per game sold, they sell wholesale like anyone else and if they sell 1,000,000 copies of a game at their sale price of $35 apiece or so to distributors; etc $35Million is not a lot of money these days especially considering not every game can reach the 1,000,000 mark. It is profitable but it's a tough market.

As a consumer I don't really care about other peoples' salaries, just as they don't really care about my finances. I don't have the money to support every company or person I somewhat like, I'll spend what free money I have on what will benefit my enjoyment the most.

I'm getting a bit sick of companies asking consumers to think like them, I'd rather those companies start thinking like consumers instead of being out of touch with reality. It's why I don't really care about Shout Factory anymore, now they only release the first one or two volumes of a series and then drop it before finishing it. It's like what they did with their C.O.P.S. box sets, they released the first two box sets but didn't bother with the third one to finish the series. They then licensed the series to some budget company who released the whole series on two separate volumes which together cost less than one of the Shout Factory volumes. Or other shows were edited in some way and Shout Factory was upset that some people were saying they won't buy the release of those shows because of the edits. These reactions shouldn't be surprising, I can easily see why people would be upset with these issues.

[DreamTR]

You were treated merely in the same manner you routinely talk down to other people at this forum (Including in this thread).

That said, I wonder just what your point was then if you were averaging such a large range of price points over the years. Weren't you trying to claim that console gamer's are like arcade gamer's and expect to pay the same prices they were paying 20 & 30 years ago?

For that to be the case, you do realize the prices would have to be fairly close to each other over that time period? Yet I think the historical record points to that being anything but the case where console game prices are concerned. There has been a wide variance over the years and fluctuations both upwards and downwards.

In other words, anything but a standard pricepoint for 30+ years.

No one is talking down to anyone. I said it as a general statement and I stand behind it. You on the other hand directly talked down to me.

The prices have been fairly close to each other the past 30 years. We still pay 19.99 to 59.99 price points and even in the NES days there were $50 price points. I paid 49.99 for Super Mario 3 at Toys R Us so I am still not sure how this isn't taken into consideration when the range is still about the same.

[DreamTR]

I'm sorry, but that's just not very relevant. Take a look at the net revenue/profit numbers for Activision in 2011. They did over a billion dollars in profit. That means that after all of those salaries were paid and offices were paid for and every other expense was taken out, they still cleared a billion dollars. Sure, not every company is Activision, but if you look at the financials for the successful companies, they are delivering record profits even in a very deep recession. So, would I agree that it costs more to make some larger scale games today than five or ten years ago? Absolutely. Do games have to go up to $70 to keep companies afloat? Absolutely not.

This still brings into the fact that they all need more revenue streams, that is why game companies are doing DLC and trying to use the "used games" market as an argument as well since movies do have a much better revenue stream and it is more controlled.

I still don't see the big deal with paying $69.99 for games when things always rise for inflation and we paid this for games back in the 90s (some) regardless of what it cost(ed) to produce them.

Not all companies will do this. Probably EA and the "bigger" ones, but Nintendo never follows suit but I would expect EA and maybe Rockstar to do it...I mean, it's already 65.54 with tax for a game these days lol

[DreamTR]

$70 is still $70 no matter how refined the game is. I have always spent $30 or less on games (and a game has to be epically mind-blowing for me to pay $30). Sure, I have to wait a while to play the game but the $40 is much more valuable to me elsewhere.

Well see this is the thing, most of the people arguing about this don't spend new prices anyway for those games. Myself included, lol

[Bojay1997]

This still brings into the fact that they all need more revenue streams, that is why game companies are doing DLC and trying to use the "used games" market as an argument as well since movies do have a much better revenue stream and it is more controlled.

I still don't see the big deal with paying $69.99 for games when things always rise for inflation and we paid this for games back in the 90s (some) regardless of what it cost(ed) to produce them.

Not all companies will do this. Probably EA and the "bigger" ones, but Nintendo never follows suit but I would expect EA and maybe Rockstar to do it...I mean, it's already 65.54 with tax for a game these days lol

Again, I'm not disagreeing that development costs have risen over time for the biggest games, but a $70 price point represents a 15% increase in MSRP at a time when companies like Activision are reporting record profits despite the worst worldwide recession in history. So, I guess I'm just not sympathetic and while I buy most of my games new at the $20 price point, I can guarantee I won't buy any at the $70 price point, especially with so much other low or no cost digital entertainment out there. If everyone adopted my attitude would it kill the industry? Maybe, but it might just mean that the Activisions and EAs of the world go away and privately held smaller developers and publishers take their place with innovative and more efficiently produced games.

[Gameguy]

I still don't see the big deal with paying $69.99 for games when things always rise for inflation and we paid this for games back in the 90s (some) regardless of what it cost(ed) to produce them.

By that logic home computers should now cost over $20,000 to buy new, instead they dropped in price and are continuing to become cheaper. Technology always becomes cheaper as time goes on.

There was a time when home releases of movies sold for $80-$100 each and were intended as rentals, years later the prices dropped to $30-$40 and were intended for people to own as they became more affordable. Costs continued to drop since then for most releases. I'm a bit curious why games are moving in the opposite direction moving from home sales to rentals as costs continue to rise, it doesn't seem right for long term success.

[Bojay1997]

By that logic home computers should now cost over $20,000 to buy new, instead they dropped in price and are continuing to become cheaper. Technology always becomes cheaper as time goes on.

There was a time when home releases of movies sold for $80-$100 each and were intended as rentals, years later the prices dropped to $30-$40 and were intended for people to own as they became more affordable. Costs continued to drop since then for most releases. I'm a bit curious why games are moving in the opposite direction moving from home sales to rentals as costs continue to rise, it doesn't seem right for long term success.

Well, in defense of the developers and publishers, advances in technology have not really reduced the need for relatively high wage employees and the sheer time and manual labor involved in developing games. In fact, even with great middleware, readymade graphic engines and other development tools, a big budget high production value game takes hundreds of people and hundreds of people years to create. It's not like a truly automated process for game development has really emerged and frankly, one of the big things driving sequel development is the fact that unused or underused graphic, audio and 3D model assets from earlier games can be repurposed. Basically, I think development costs have gone up, although I don't think they have gone up to the extent the industry or its shareholders would like us to believe.

[Leo_A]

I can recall trying to argue with you once that the matter of arcade pricing wasn't clear cut. I suggested (And my own experience backs that up at the very least) that many will walk into an arcade planning not to play X number of games. Rather, they plan to spend a few dollars and have some fun until those dollars are used up. Pricing a play at 25 cents, 50 cents, or more isn't important. All it detirmines for such individuals is the length of their stay with the operator's earnings from that customer being the same no matter the price per play. Not to mention other factors like there being goodwill at 25 cents per play since people feel like they're getting more bang for their buck which is also encouragement for someone to return and tell other's about it. That's not to say I advocate any pricing level for an arcade game so let's not go down that road....

But what I'm getting at is that things aren't clear cut and you have to look at the entire picture. You seem to think it's black & white. Development cost rise so prices have to rise. Inflation rises so prices have to been increased to reflect it. And so on...

Yet you mentioned that they want to combat used game sales. I suggest that the way to encourage people to buy new is to do exactly the opposite of what this rumor suggests. Lower your game prices, be competitive in your pricing to fight companies like GameStop, etc. Stop the increases in prices and maybe even go backwards a bit with them could very well increase the number of new copies sold of a specific game so dramatically that the lower profit margin for each individual sale would be more than compensated for by the increase in their sales. Driving more people to used software sales by increasing game prices strikes me as very likely to be counterproductive.

They want more revenue and want to increase their profits and I think that's natural and just fine for a business. But their solutions aren't creative in the slightest and I think many risk doing more damage than good for their bottom line. Profits and keeping your consumers happy go hand in hand.

Those needs aren't at opposite ends of the spectrum from each other like companies like Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, and Codemasters seem to think they are. Driving more consumers to the used marketplace while at the same time alienating those consumers that do buy used software with things like locking content away sure doesn't strike me as a way to pleasing shareholders in the long-term or encouraging customers to buy their software new.

Anyways, I don't want to suggest I know more about the commercial aspects of this business than those actually in charge of that side. Nor do I want to advocate anything one way or another. But what I'm getting at it that things aren't nearly as cut and dry as you want to make them out to be. Raising prices doesn't necessarily equate to increased profits nor is that the only way for a business to increase profits.

The prices have been fairly close to each other the past 30 years. We still pay 19.99 to 59.99 price points and even in the NES days there were $50 price points. I paid 49.99 for Super Mario 3 at Toys R Us so I am still not sure how this isn't taken into consideration when the range is still about the same.

The range is a huge one for new games over the years. It extends from about $10 to at least $100 and probably beyond in isolated circumstances (Did any rpg's like Phantasy Star surpass Virtua Racing's $100 MSRP?).

It's been anything but the now pretty much long dead 25 cent per play arcade standard that existed from the early 70's into the early 90's (And which has been dead for a good 15 years or so for the most part).

Game prices have always had a large range, had shifts upwards and downwards (Remember when most any N64 game was $80?), and there has always been plenty of exceptions to standard prices of even top named games (Sega's sports releases come to mind a few years back; a strategy that I believe worked for them until they lost some key licenses and folded up).

Not all companies will do this. Probably EA and the "bigger" ones, but Nintendo never follows suit but I would expect EA and maybe Rockstar to do it...I mean, it's already 65.54 with tax for a game these days lol

Nintendo will follow suit, no doubt. Just likely a generation behind.

I have little doubt that a AAA Wii U release is going to be priced at $59.99, for instance. If Microsoft and Sony price AAA releases at $69.99, I'd wager a bet that the Wii U's successor will follow suit.

[TonyTheTiger]

This still brings into the fact that they all need more revenue streams, that is why game companies are doing DLC and trying to use the "used games" market as an argument as well since movies do have a much better revenue stream and it is more controlled.

Isn't that part of the problem, though? It's a really screwed up mentality based on a faulty premise. Why do they need more revenue streams? Because they're trying to be like Hollywood...which already has alternate revenue streams in place thanks to the nature of the medium. Then they turn around and, instead of just plain accepting that video games and movies are two different things, they try to force a square peg into a round hole, trying to pretend that DLC and used game shenanigans are the video game equivalent of the various revenue making devices available to film when they aren't really the same at all. And, in the end, when none of it really works (big surprise), the last option is of course to raise prices. When the only reason all of these band-aids had to be applied in the first place is because of the initial false equivalency.

Games cost a lot. Sure, no problem. It's a luxury, after all. It's not so much the price itself that's the problem but rather how the industry got to this point in the first place. If prices had to go up for legitimate uncontrollable reasons then whatcha gonna do, right? But this is not uncontrollable. This is willful ignorance that games can have budgets that creep past $100 million.

[Bojay1997]

I don't think that it's necessarily that they are trying to be like Hollywood, it's that they are trying to be like every other technology and entertainment company that is publicly traded. They have an obligation to shareholders to maximize returns and to do that, they have risked more and more developing these titles in the hopes of generating bigger and bigger profits. At some point, the model will no longer make sense and I think you will continue to see more and more large video game companies collapse or be divided down into more discrete entities. I read this morning that nobody has expressed much interest in buying Vivendi's 61% controlling share in Activision and that is a profitable company. Perhaps the bubble is getting closer to popping than we may have assumed.

Isn't that part of the problem, though? It's a really screwed up mentality based on a faulty premise. Why do they need more revenue streams? Because they're trying to be like Hollywood...which already has alternate revenue streams in place thanks to the nature of the medium. Then they turn around and, instead of just plain accepting that video games and movies are two different things, they try to force a square peg into a round hole, trying to pretend that DLC and used game shenanigans are the video game equivalent of the various revenue making devices available to film when they aren't really the same at all. And, in the end, when none of it really works (big surprise), the last option is of course to raise prices. When the only reason all of these band-aids had to be applied in the first place is because of the initial false equivalency.

Games cost a lot. Sure, no problem. It's a luxury, after all. It's not so much the price itself that's the problem but rather how the industry got to this point in the first place. If prices had to go up for legitimate uncontrollable reasons then whatcha gonna do, right? But this is not uncontrollable. This is willful ignorance that games can have budgets that creep past $100 million.

[Rickstilwell1]

Well see this is the thing, most of the people arguing about this don't spend new prices anyway for those games. Myself included, lol

Well sometimes on occasion we do. Best Buy has some good deals on new games sometimes. I was able to get Final Fantasy XIII-2 for $20 on sale when other retailers like Target are still selling it for $40.