Why Games Cost $60

If it were true, that even developers believe that a $70 price ceiling in new technology in games should never happen because of digital distribution and "emerging technologies", then why the hell are Xbox 360 games being offered at the same price as online retailers.

Mass Effect is for sale on Amazon.com for $19.99. For that price you get the disk, case, instruction book and whatever other trash the publisher puts in as marketing and warranty cards. For that same price on Xbox Live, you can download the game to your harddrive and you don't get any of the, admittedly, wasteful packaging. But, you also CAN'T take it to a friends house. You CAN'T sell it on eBay. You CAN'T even take it back if you don't like it for XBL credit for another game.

This just goes to further prove that while technology is supposed to make things easier, faster and less expensive, it has also effectively crippled consumer rights.

 

 

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Why Games Cost $60

via Slashdot by Soulskill on 9/25/09

eldavojohn writes "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price — but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99, as did the makers of Batman Arkham Asylum? After all, those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop, and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience.'"

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