It was recently announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will have an unusually high RRP in the UK of £54.99. Some analysts, including Michael Pachter, see it as a test for future triple-A title pricing. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick later joked about raising prices even further.
ShopTo retailer was quoted by Eurogamer as saying recent price increases for popular franchises are a “worrying trend”.
Meanwhile, I just bought Civilization Revolution from the iPhone App Store for a ridiculous £2.99. This is a temporary discount from $10, but either way you get the same core gameplay as Civilization Revolution for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, which sold at full price at their time of release.
The App Store is not the only platform offering games at very low prices. Steam of course has had a lot of discount promotions as of late. Casual game portals are also getting into the habit of offering games at unconventional prices. The RRP for Return to Mysterious Island 2 (a full-fledged adventure game) is $19,99 — so that will be roughly the price you’ll pay pretty much everywhere. Except for casual game portal Big Fish that is, where it’s on sale for only $6,99.
Interestingly, the publisher allows only Big Fish Games to sell it at that price, because that’s the standard price of all the games on Big Fish. So it’s really the platform that sets the price.
How will consumers perceive value for money if these trends continue, with some games becoming more expensive and others much cheaper? And what does this mean for game developers?
I really have no predictions or hypotheses… what do you think?
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It could mean more and more of a likelyhood that another publisher model will soon surface in the casual game space in order to make sure your title sells enough for you to keep operating.
Ironic (or depressing?), since the very reason most companies started up in the online casual space was to escape this scenario in the AAA industry.
wazoo
August 12th, 2009
I love digital distribution (I buy all my PC games on steam unless they are not available) but I think that is part of the problem since the platform can decide the price rather than the publisher.
But I think that is the least of our worries compared to Activision wanting to raise prices. I do not like Activision at all, and they are what I consider the “new” EA in that while EA used to put out the same sequels every year (and they still do to an extent) they are taking more risks now while Activision just milks franchises for all they are worth (see 6 Guitar Hero releases every year). I think the standard 360/PS3 game price in the US is very high already at $60 and I don’t know how typical high school and college students could afford any more than that. So I definitely don’t want to see PC games go down the same route (they are usually $50 in the US).
So those are my thoughts, but as for what I think will happen, it’s hard to say. Another thing is what’s going on with 360 games on demand. Mass Effect in Australia was priced 3x higher than the current retail price IIRC. Guess we will see what happens.
Jeff Moeller
August 13th, 2009
I’ve been thinking about this a lot too.
I’m not sure it’s going to work out like everyone hopes. Cheaper games for everybody just isn’t sustainable. Something has to give. And I think it’ll be “quality” that gives.
You can’t really justify working on a game for more than 2 or 3 months if you’re selling it at 99c. The economics just don’t work out.
Geomex (my iPhone puzzle game) launched in 2008 at $6.99, with five (count ‘em!) game modes. Spent lots of time tinkering, balancing, polishing, etc. Didn’t sell. It’s now $1.99. If $6.99 was a viable price, devs could actually justify working on bigger, more grandeur games, with all the love and polish they deserve. I’m not sure they’ll be able to if this downward trend continues.
Mo
August 18th, 2009
Nice article. Traditional retail distribution has huge fixed costs, and as consumer demand shifts to online, those will be spread over a smaller number of buyers, thus increasing the prices if every actor in the value chain wants to keep the same margins.
Meanwhile, as digitally distributed games are shifting to a service model, the price that often makes the most sense is zero, with other ways of monetising part of that audience.
Diane
August 27th, 2009