Why All Games Shouldn’t Be $60
Player Affinity writes: The gaming industry has faced more change in the last five years than it had the combined 20 years before that. We've seen the rise of downloadable games, indie games and DLC, which expands a game's longevity. We've seen components of games getting locked off for used buyers unless they spend an extra $10. DRM has become more intrusive than ever, and then it kinda-sorta went away. The cost of developing games has skyrocketed, and so too have the marketing budgets. After all, if a game costs millions of dollars to make, you want to be sure it sells millions of copies, right? These are the so-called Triple-A games: games coming out at $60 that the publisher has clearly put a lot of marketing and development muscle behind. In all these changing economic conditions though, one thing hasn't changed too much: most console games still cost $60 at retail, regardless of the amount of cash spent developing or marketing the title. Surely all games aren't created equal, so why the uniform approach to pricing in the retail space, especially compared to the changes the downloadable marketplace has brought with it?
