There's a difference between a property being worth its asking price as far as value goes and pricing a property too high for a given market.

Hey, as much as I played Medieval 2: Total War, it would probably have been worth about $450! The problem is, for better or worse, PC games are historically limited to a sub-$50 price point simply by virtue that the market won't pay any more than that for a title. Very few properties have proved an exception to this rule: Doom 3 (shipped at $54.99 IIRC) is the only exception that comes to my mind.

Whether or not you think MW2 might be worth 60 bucks, I think it's pretty safe to say that the game would sell terribly at that price point. The level of piracy would be astronomical; even higher than the original.

Value is such a subjective thing (personally, I wouldn't pay more than 10 bucks for the original), but market trends are at least traceable.

I think the real sucker is the guy who avoids something just to be edgy on an Internet forum. I'll pay however much I damned well please for whatever title I want. Value is subjective, grow up.

Todays gamers are suckers. sheep.

People will still buy the game in droves.

The Advocate: Really? I gave up on WaW when it got into the last few levels. I got stuck at one bit, got frustrated, then decided to play around a little bit, and discovered that there's a scripted tripwire that you have to pass, and until then the game will throw endless enemies at you. There's no killing them all (I tried), so rather than carefully scripting a challenging sequence and letting you move on, you have to move forward to trip a certain point, then one after, then one after, then hit a checkpoint. I finally got past that bit, only to realize that the last four or five maps in the game did that exclusively. In other words, no realism, no logic, just endless streams of baddies until you hit the next tripwire, and the next, and the next. Personally, I think that's unforgivably lazy and shoddy game design if it's done once, but for the last third of a game, if not more? Treyarch certainly won't be getting a dime out of me after that crap.

Hey hey Tumbler, whoa slow down. People have the RIGHT to stuff their faces with a Pizza Hut Meat Lover's stuffed crust pizza for dinner every day if they want to! What if they can't afford MW2 because that $10.00 was spent on 5000 calorie pizza?!!!! GAMING INDUSTRY

LOL@ anyone suggesting MW2 doesn't deserver a $60 price tag on the pc. MW2, from what we've see so far is one of the few games that does deserve the higher price point. The additions they are making to the game look awesome, I'm ready to give them my money. I'm going console on this game as that is what it's meant to be, a console game. If you prefer it on the PC fine, but don't for a minute try and claim this isn't work $60.

Pull your head out of the ground and look at the competition. Hell just look at the video clips for this game. Selling this for $50 would be just giving $10 to each pc gamer and honestly I see no reason why they would need to do this. You know it's going to be awesome. They know it's going to be awesome. So go ahead and bitch and moan but COD4 kicked so much ass they would probably be safe charging more than $59.99 for it. They might get tons of bad press prior to launch but as long as the game rocks when people play it they can do pretty much whatever they want.

They are the kings of the FPS genre right now. Lets stop pretending they need to cater to anyone at this point.

This comment was edited on Aug 19, 2009, 13:31.

Sorry I didn't realize these boards were just for your personal conversations

Was I talking to you Verno?

Stop whining kxmode.

Was all of that plus "I guess my point is to stop whining" directed to me?

I do recall posting a message, in another thread, about paying $49.99 for a PC game back in 2001 and then buying Fallout 3 for PC last year for the same price. In other words inflation had not hit PC gaming. Methinks my little comment may have jinxed it!

I paid 50 bucks for TIE Fighter back in what, 94 or so? I actually remember paying 50 bucks for games earlier than that. Of course, a game would give you a hundred or three hours of playtime single player, but that's beside the point.

If you calculate games from '94 to today, the price point hasn't changed, but inflation has continued to increase. If game prices kept up with inflation, we'd be paying 70 bucks or so per mainstream game. Instead, game profit margins have gotten slimmer, while the cost to develop games has ballooned disproportionately. Therefore, games are riskier and riskier ventures, and thus we see less innovative games.

Let's go back even further. I remember paying 50 bucks for NES games. So let's say... 1987. That works out to over 90 dollars per game inflation adjusted. I even remember Atari games that sold for 30 bucks in the early 80's, maybe 84? That's 61 dollars today inflation adjusted.

I guess my point is to stop whining. Price increases are inevitable as time goes on. We're lucky we had a stable price point for 20+ years with video games. We pay less today on average for a video game than we did 5, 10, or even 15 years ago.

WTF? Doom 3 wasn't $60. I went to Best Buy the day it came out and bought it for the normal $49. I had it pre-ordered on ebgames for the same amount but I didn't want to wait for shipping. It was $49 everywhere. Maybe in Canada it was $60...

Of course people will pirate this, it's going to be the most pirated game of 2009, no doubt.

I do recall posting a message, in another thread, about paying $49.99 for a PC game back in 2001 and then buying Fallout 3 for PC last year for the same price. In other words inflation had not hit PC gaming. Methinks my little comment may have jinxed it!

Also, pirating is a shoddy response to this. It's like Critical Mass - just pisses everyone off and accomplishes zilch.

Want the game but angry about the price? Buy it when the price drops. They'll notice if purchases rise dramatically when the price falls in line.
Of course, they might perceive this to mean that they should always launch high, get those initial purchases, then drop to a sales price to flood in more, but I doubt it'll be seen that way.

Do as I always do...wait for a 30.00 sale.
Picked up CoD5 2 months ago for $18.00.

Amen Bats.

Edit: I bought Dawn of War II and Call of Duty: World at War for $25 each. All I did was wait for a discount sale!

This comment was edited on Aug 18, 2009, 13:48.

I admit I spent hours and hours, and I played very faithfully every day until I hit 55. I got bored after that though, but I enjoyed it... I recently reinstalled COD4 actually, to play with PeZBoT, and it was definitely better than WaW. Had a much better feeling.

Unless it's a large improvement content-wise from COD4, not worth the extra $10. IF it is, however, like the sticky grenade perk (awesome!) or the C-130 (customizable kill-streak rewards) are pretty damn cool. And the new weapons, for example, they need even more weapons (and weapon-specific addons, not a red sight + silencer + default skins for every single damn weapon...)

COD4 singleplayer was intense, too, and anyone who skipped it should try it out.

MW 2 needs to prove its worth though, as COD 4 was "fresh" for when it was released.

This logic is insane, they would sell so much more at a cheaper price, especially with a brand name like this thus reducing piracy.

The logic is actually that, for this game, people will be willing to spend an extra $10.
Honestly, for the majority of buyers they'll do it. They might do it begrudgingly, but they'll want the game, and they'll want it immediately so that other people don't get 3 or 6 months mastering online play before they can jump in.

so a reasonably cheaper price equals more purchases

But more purchases doesn't mean more profit. And that's what this is about, right? It's not about making the consumer as happy as possible, it's about making the consumer reasonably happy while you're reasonably happy. Some companies put more effort into both sides than others (which often leads to longer lasting profits.) Others don't.
But yes, the goal is ALWAYs ferraris.
Arguably if you sell at marginal cost you'll sell the most units, but you won't make the most money. This is an attempt to make the most money. They think the brand is strong enough to survive this.
And they're probably right. Some of us will sit on messageboards and complain. Most other people will walk into the store and barely notice the change in price.

There is a very simple way to tell Activision to go fuck themselves with their higher prices : Don't fucking buy the game.

As long as you all bend over and take it up the ass, they'll start charging 60 bucks for every single one of their new games.

Simply don't buy it. It's that simple. If they sell many fewer copies because of their higher price, they'll realize that people won't accept this price point.

Of course, most people will still buy it, because they're lemmings who'll gladly swallow whatever crap the game industry wishes to shovel.

*takes MW2 off list.*

Plenty of other games to play this holiday season.

Creston

Eh, let them charge $100. If people are stupid enough to buy it, then good job Activision! See, it's called a free-market economy.