FairPlay

Wow, a bunch of self righteous teenagers on crack.

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Look at Microsoft - earlier this year, they released the new Xbox console at £300, insisting that it was a fair price and couldn''t be sold any cheaper. Consumers, though, refused to buy it, and Microsoft swiftly slashed the price, first to £200, and then to £160. In less than six months, the price of brand new game technology was halved, through consumer power alone. We aim to do the same to videogames. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER for games to cost more than £20.

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Guess what idiots, Microsoft is losing real money on every XBox they sell. They are selling it below cost.

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It''s hardly a controversial statement, is it? Nobody likes paying £40-£45 for a new videogame, especially when it only cost 40p to make.

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Ah yes, the old "The only cost involved is making the CD and box". Obviously all the employees and equipment that spent 2 years making the game came free.

Perhaps what we need is a boycott of all the pathetic "anti-business" groups that go around trying to tell people that its "unfair" for them to make profit, that they should pay money to develop things and then give them away. Last time I checked people want better graphics, stories, voiceovers and cutscenes for games. These things cost millions of dollars to make. Outside of the 5%-10% markup on prices to make up for all the software these hippies steal, game prices are very much accurate of what it costs to produce. And yet despite charging such "high" prices many development houses are lucky to break even on a title (more game development houses go bankrupt on their first game then restaurants fail in their first year).

It woud be nice if someday these drunks got out of college, payed back all their free loading student loans, and realized companies can''t change the universe just because some lazy punk doesn''t want to have to pay for anything.

I caught that X-Box thing as soon as I saw it too.

Although, I''d suggest that the prices could come down a little bit. I''d suggest that perhaps a 20% drop is feasable. I don''t think for a moment that publishers are just raking in huge profits, although I think they are being somewhat inefficent in their system.

For example, I agree with their points that publishers keep throwing money every-which-way at every single FPS clone they can get their hands on.

And now days, like you can get the soundtrack of a movie, you can get the game of a movie.

They also have a point that if they dropped priced, demand would increase, and the production cost for the actual game would increase comparitivly slightly. Although, probably not by the ammounts they are predicting.

Also a week boycot!? people will just get games earlier/later...

Do not meddle in the affairs of moderators, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS
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http://www.fairplay-campaign.co.uk/newspage.htm

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Bruno Bonnell, the president of Infogrames, has expressed the opinion repeatedly that cheaper games are necessary for the videogames industry to survive and prosper. However, the current licensing arrangements of console manufacturers effectively make it impossible for Infogrames to pursue this policy. The results are obvious.

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Don''t support consoles so much then, you baf00ns!

If they have a problem, causing them these big losses they are talking about, then they should drop the consoles, or at least make sure the games they release on consoles are good, and don''t publish "clone" games for them.

Problem Solved!

Do not meddle in the affairs of moderators, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS
Cool Links :: [ GD | TG | MS | NeHe | PA | SA | M&S | TA | LiT ]
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The only thing about a price drop is that you''re assuming voodoo economics will work in every case (it doesn''t). Also the reason for all the FPS games (I was actually going to cover this in my first post but decided not to) is because of how hard it is to get a successful (enough) game. Like I said, most games are lucky to turn any profit at all, so publishers are far more likely to back something that is proven to sell rather than take a 50/50 chance that they''ll have to swallow 2 million in development costs. At least with a generic FPS (or whatever the genre of the year is) they are likely to break even, and if they are lucky it will be the next FPS hit which can be used to pay off their losses on other games.

From: http://www.fairplay-campaign.co.uk/faqs.htm, third question:

"But don''t games cost millions to make?

Yes, they often do. (The average figure for a game these days is around £1 million, and can rise much higher for certain titles.) But the cost of development has nothing to do with retail price. "

How ignorant are these people? It''s like saying: "We don''t have to pay the farmers who planted, nurtured, and harvested the crop, we just have to pay the seed company!"

It''s quite clear to me that none of them have jobs where they realize the above statement is simply NOT true. I have no doubt that if games were to drop in price, demand would increase. But I have a good feeling that most companies pay/hire someone to figure out that optimal price where they maximize their profit. Good games are worth every bit of cost.

Anyone want to hack their site and post some truth? I think it would be more worthwhile than people "hacking" the forums... Note to mods: The above is a joke, I would never condone nor perform such an action.

The only thing I think I agree with on that site is that the price structuring is too rigid. Triple A titles like Mario Sunshine or Doom III will obviously have had millions splashed out on them, but there are plenty of games that didn''t cost half that much, and yet charge pretty much the same. Why is that?

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pan narrans
Study + Hard Work + Loud Profanity = Good Code

If you email the contact address on the site, like I did with a bit of a rant, they''ll actually reply to you pretty quick.

I''d suggest telling them what you, as consumers as well as developers, think of their campaign.

Starboy.

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Original post by pan narrans
The only thing I think I agree with on that site is that the price structuring is too rigid. Triple A titles like Mario Sunshine or Doom III will obviously have had millions splashed out on them, but there are plenty of games that didn''t cost half that much, and yet charge pretty much the same. Why is that?

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Because Triple A games sell many times more copies than standard "50/50 for bankrupty" games. They more than make up the difference in the quantity they sell. Games that can sell large numbers of copies and cost little to make do have lower prices. Consider mass market, cheap to make stuff like Deer Hunter.

To bad they don''t have a forum... (if anyone knows different post a URL).

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Original post by Michalson
Because Triple A games sell many times more copies than standard "50/50 for bankrupty" games. They more than make up the difference in the quantity they sell.

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Well, over here in blighty it often seems as though certain games are priced at the average level, when they should be a little less.
I certainly feel bad for small companies that don't survive, but if a product is weaker how can it be sold at the same price?

EDIT: I mean games that haven't cost as much to produce, and so COULD be cheaper.

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pan narrans
Study + Hard Work + Loud Profanity = Good Code

[edited by - pan narrans on October 1, 2002 11:16:16 AM]

I''m not quite great on my economics, but from my high school days I thought I remembered something where if you were to cut price in half *and* sell twice as many, you wouldn''t necessarily be making the same amount of revenue. Anybody got something to back this up or proof otherwise?

The reason being that just ebcause you halve the selling price, doesn''t mean the cost to produce also gets halved...

Example:

Unit costs £10 to make. You sell 100 units at £30 a piece. £30 - £10 = £20, x 100 = £2000 profit.

Half the price and sell double the amount:

Unit costs £10 to make. You sell 200 units at £15 a piece. £15 - £10 = £5, x 200 = £1000 profit.

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Original post by SilentReaper
I''m not quite great on my economics, but from my high school days I thought I remembered something where if you were to cut price in half *and* sell twice as many, you wouldn''t necessarily be making the same amount of revenue. Anybody got something to back this up or proof otherwise?

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That’s correct (though with video games the effect is mostly negligible)

Lets say you are selling your product for $100. You sell 100.
Now you reduce the price to $50 and sell 200. Lets look at the profit: It cost $25 to make your product, so each one sold at $100 makes $75 in profit ($75x100=$7500 profit). Each one sold at $50 makes $25 in profit ($25x200=$5000 profit). So yes, when you are working with items where the main expense is how much it takes to produce each copy you will earn more at the higher price, since the production cost/unit stays constant even if you decrease the selling price.

However video games (along with anything else that is primarily development/R&D dependent, like software and pharmaceuticals) you have a base cost to "invent" the product, say $2500, and a much small (mostly negligible) cost for manufacturing and distributing identical copies of it (say $5). Once your huge development costs are paid off by sales the rest becomes profit. That’s why you see "gold" edition games, after the initial investment is paid off they can reduce the cost of the game to around the cost of making and distributing it+markup.

Correct but you''ve also got to remember the marketing budgets which are usually many times the development costs. Even if the dev costs are low because it''s a gold edition, it still needs to be marketed, which will bump the cost-per-unit cost.

Could I say the word, 'cost' more in one sentence?

[edited by - Starboy on October 1, 2002 11:38:15 AM]

Yes, I learned that one as well.

Basicly you can make a massive profit ammount by selling a massive ammount, but there is a point where you get maximum profit percentage.

Perhaps more mathamatical:

As # Sold tends towards infinity, $ Profit increases

As # Sold tends towards "the optimal point", % Profit increases


Anyway, as far as I am concerned, it is all stupid economics stuff and stupid publisher-bashing stuff.

I would like to see the price of a game go down, but I seriously don''t see that happening in a hurry. This dosn''t need a quick fix, what it needs is for the (relitivly new and changing) industry to settle down, weed out the crud, and work itself out.

Do not meddle in the affairs of moderators, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS
Cool Links :: [ GD | TG | MS | NeHe | PA | SA | M&S | TA | LiT ]
Got Clue? :: [ Start Here! | Google | MSDN | GameDev.net Reference | OGL v D3D | File Formats | Go FAQ yourself ]

Thanks for the info, some of this stuff is starting to come back to me...

Does it seem like to me that it''s only common sense that games cost more than audio CD''s/movies? In one 1-2 hour sitting, I am able to observe/listen (not even interact) to the contents of most audio CD''s or DVD''s from start to finish, yet I would be very frustrated if it only took me 1-2 hours start to finish on games that weren''t shareware or free. RTCW took me about 10 the first time I played, but the fact that I can replay it and choose to perform differently each time through made it well worth the initial price tag, not to mention the multiplayer aspect.

There are just so many flaws in their argument and it doesn''t seem very well supported, at least, that''s how I see it. They just blab out their "facts" and expect people to blindly agree with them. Looking at their online petition, they already have over 1,000 names. Wow.

*chants*
We want better stuff for free!!
*chants*

Do not meddle in the affairs of moderators, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS
Cool Links :: [ GD | TG | MS | NeHe | PA | SA | M&S | TA | LiT ]
Got Clue? :: [ Start Here! | Google | MSDN | GameDev.net Reference | OGL v D3D | File Formats | Go FAQ yourself ]

The site does make a few good points. For instance, I''m more likely to buy a 20 dollar movie because it looks cool than a 40 dollar game for the same reason. For that extra twenty dollars, I need to be fairly certain that I''ll enjoy the game.

But that''s where Blockbuster comes in, at least in the console market. Pay 5 dollars, play the game a week, and if it sucks then you''re only out 5 dollars. In fact, I think they''ve started a deal where if you like the movie you rent, you can buy it cheap; not sure if it applies to video games, but if so it just makes renting the game in advance that much better of an idea.

CM