I was thinking to myself this morning while reading the Nintendo-goes-apes***-on-piracy thread about the price of video games today. I just couldn't shake the feeling that a hundred bucks as a starter price is steep for a new game. Games that hit 60 bucks on steam (like Dragon Age) just feel more appropriately priced.

I always seem to balk at a 3-figure game price, it just seems exxy.

So I wondered if I was being an old man complaining about the price of fuel today because I can remember when it was 59.9 cents per litre. Thinking back to when I was 10 and buying Atari 2600 games - they were 20-30 bucks at the local K-Mart. Are games more expensive in real terms today?

Well, the inflation figures are easy to find, so I plugged in the numbers:

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/29/captureit.png

Yes, they are more expensive, and there's a reason why 50-60 bucks feels like the right price for a new game, that's about what we paid back in the day! Granted that games take a lot more work to ptoduce now, but the market is also much bigger - MW2 was the biggest entertainment release of all time, including movies and music.

The physical cost of production is also a lot less - we used to buy carts and now we just download DRM'd 1s and 0s over the intertubes!

What about the GST?

What about the GST?

What about it? 10% GST doesn't make a 50-60 dollar game cost over a hundred bucks, although there's some interesting inflation figures from around 2000..

oh s*** let me get this s*** right yo.

This is nothing new. Anyone who has bothered to look online can see the huge price difference between brick and motor stores and OS stores. The only thing you can really do is by online.



last edited by greazy at 11:54:25 11/Mar/10

This is nothing new, everyone already knows Australian's love dykes.

Improper use of apostrophe.

Poor grammar aside, what do you mean about dykes?

I think another reason why games are more expensive are the overhead costs in producing the game nowadays. programmers, marketing, game devs, creative/arts, music and sound production. I would argue that 25/30 years ago these costs were not as obvious.

However, this does not justify why we pay so much more in Australia for the same s*** some other bloke in US gets for average 20/30 bucks less.

nice table hoggy =D

Hogfather: You're right about the Atari 2600 era, but not the SNES/Megadrive ERA. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember Zelda 3 having around a AU$120 rpp when it first launched here. As did other high-profile SNES and Megadrive titles.

So accounting for inflation, we're better of than that now. It's still f***ed though, $50 should be the right current price for a new A-list game.

I remember Harvey Norman wanted $120 for Sim City on the Amiga.

Hogfather: You're right about the Atari 2600 era, but not the SNES/Megadrive ERA. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember Zelda 3 having around a AU$120 rpp when it first launched here. As did other high-profile SNES and Megadrive titles.

So accounting for inflation, we're better of than that now. It's still f***ed though, $50 should be the right current price for a new A-list game.

I reckon there's other factors too - like the AUD value vs the USD. I can't find good data but I think back in the mid 80s the dollar was relatively strong having only recently been floated, and then in the later 90s got down near 50c which was no doubt passed onto the consumer resulting in higher prices for later-era software.

That's what is really frustrating at the moment - we're still paying top dollar for new games at retail and the dollar is relatively very high, and even e-tailers are trying to force this price inequity (how much life does cc=uk have in it?).

Something is wrong.

I remember buying my snes games in the mid/late 90's for 90-100 bucks?

I remember buying my snes games in the mid/late 90's for 90-100 bucks?

The AUD was approaching an all-time low. Carts are also relatively expensive.

All 3 donkey kong country titles RRP for $100 when they first hit the snes. I just paid $60 for BC2. I also make tens of thousands of dollars more per year now then what I did in grade 3 so I think I'm better off now.

All 3 donkey kong country titles RRP for $100 when they first hit the snes. I just paid $60 for BC2. I also make tens of thousands of dollars more per year now then what I did in grade 3 so I think I'm better off now.

Congratulations. Most of us make money. That still doesn't change the fact that games are overpriced.

So I wondered if I was being an old man complaining about the price of fuel today because I can remember when it was 59.9 cents per litre.

Offa this man's lawn!
Seriously, when I was doing console work at service stations around 1996 the price of ULP hovered around 60c per litre. Diesel was around 67c and LPG was anywhere between 26c and 30c.

Edit:

The physical cost of production is also a lot less - we used to buy carts and now we just download DRM'd 1s and 0s over the intertubes!

Digital distribution more than anything should have acted as a huge moderator on prices. When the difference between a full boxed copy and a downloadable package is only around $10 it highlights how warped games pricing is. Digital distribution should be rightfully destroying brick and mortar retail sales due to the cost savings involved, but is propped artificially high by scared retailers and greedy distributors.

I remember paying $120 for Street Fighter 2 from a toy shop. Also payed $90 for Secret of Mana at Toys 'r Us in Pacific Fair. Ah the good old SNES days.

now can you make a spreadsheet that details the price disparity between US and AU games that show exchange rates etc?

I remember paying $100 for Yoshi's Island on SNES. I also remember seeing Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64 for $110.

I pretty much never buy games in stores anymore. I mostly order from overseas (for console games), or buy from Steam.

I remember paying $100 for Yoshi's Island on SNES. I also remember seeing Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64 for $110. I pretty much never buy games in stores anymore. I mostly order from overseas (for console games), or buy from Steam.

oh man I wish i could play conker's again.

You can, it emulates really well :)

I reckon there's other factors too - like the AUD value vs the USD. I can't find good data but I think back in the mid 80s the dollar was relatively strong having only recently been floated, and then in the later 90s got down near 50c which was no doubt passed onto the consumer resulting in higher prices for later-era software.

That's what is really frustrating at the moment - we're still paying top dollar for new games at retail and the dollar is relatively very high, and even e-tailers are trying to force this price inequity (how much life does cc=uk have in it?).

Something is wrong.

The AUD was approaching an all-time low. Carts are also relatively expensive.

Actually, the exchange rate was the reverse in the late '90s (high not low) but the price of games has stablised because of legislation. Did you forget in your dotage that the federal government is monitoring the prices because early on the price of a game was quadruple of what it should have been.

Games cost more to make these days? Bigger devs teams, more tech involved and so on?

Actually, the exchange rate was the reverse in the late '90s (high not low) but the price of games has stablised because of legislation. Did you forget in your dotage that the federal government is monitoring the prices because early on the price of a game was quadruple of what it should have been.

Actually, I think you'll find that the AU collapsed in the late 90s before reaching an all-time nadir in 2001.

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/7227/capturehs.png
http://www.indexmundi.com/xrates/graph.aspx?c1=USD&c2=AUD&days=3650&lastday=20060220

protip: always check the f***ing data before making smartarse remarks.

Games cost more to make these days? Bigger devs teams, more tech involved and so on?

Games have a much bigger audience now days? Bigger consumer base, more consoles in the market place and so on?

don't forget it's the pirates that are forcing the prices up... or is that the other way around?
at least in Australia we get a sometimes censored region locked version that's filled with anti piracy messages for our extra money, this makes games awesome and not worth downloading at all. I'm disgusted in what my pixels do when i load up a gory game like "2010 winter Olympics!" i think the government should be doing more like filtering my internet and taxing me in 4 different ways for using my car on the roads, taking 1/4 of my weekly income to build infrastructure that i need to pay to use anyway.

I can understand if prices are a little more than the US due to shipping distances. but if i can buy a brand new item and ship it to Australia for less than half the price of a second hand item in Australia then where the hell is my money going?

I can understand if prices are a little more than the US due to shipping distances. but if i can buy a brand new item and ship it to Australia for less than half the price of a second hand item in Australia then where the hell is my money going?

Wouldn't the game media be manufactured in Asia?

Depends on the game i would imagine?

In 1987 defender of the crown was released on commodore 64 on disk. I bought it from kmart for $40 the week it was released

it was probably the biggest budget game at the time and was on cheap disk not cart or tape. Plug that in to your spreadsheet

Plug that in to your spreadsheet

This has just become my new catch phrase at the office.

old man complaining about the price of fuel today because I can remember when it was 59.9 cents per litre

Old? f*** man I remember when fuel was 30c/L Get off my lawn.

I remember when LPG was like 14c a litre.

Also, I seem to remember games being about $100 since about the mid 90's.

Its BS we pay $100 for games, some are even $110 at release, who are they f***ing kidding. $60 should be the tops for a new release and should come down pretty quickly to about $40, then about $20-30 after a year or 2. You would have a f***load more people buying games.

No-one is going to be paying $80-90 for a year old game, yet thats what you see in the shops.

I've bought more games since I started using steam than ever before.

Some games never come down in price, which is even more stupid.

Modern Warfare is 3 f***ing cents cheaper than MW2 at EB, I f***ing lol'd.

While you suckers with the SNES and the Megadrive were paying chump tax on cartridges, us Amiga owners were getting games for the cost of a few DD 3.5s. (Admittedly half of them were half arsed conversions of console games.)

It's ok to talk about piracy on qgl that occurred 20 years ago yeah?

Piracy didn't happen before torrents.

I don't have the spreadsheet or I'd happily plug it like ur mum.

I'm imagining though that 40 bucks in '87 might break 80 bucks? It would miss the two biggest years of inflation (which is probably why it was so much to start with).

While I kinda agree with you, I think your facts are a little incorrect, and you've overlooked a few important factors.

Firstly, around the early 90s, most Game Boy games were $30, with PC games being $40. IN 1992/1993 SuperNES games such as SSFIIT were $90 on release, but most others were $80. By 1994 top PC releases were $60-70.

My point is your scale of inflation is a bit out - the gap isn't as big as you're claiming, based on inflation.

The other important factor is the size of design teams. 4-8 people wasn't uncommon for GameBoy games. Games like Zelda LttP might have had 70 people work on them, but these days games like Zelda TP had almost 400. Metroid is a simpilar story - Super Metroid with a design team of just under 60 from memory ballooned out to well over 200 for Prime, and 30 just for Fusion.

The actual development itself is a lot more involved. Simple glyphs of sprites now become large libraries of 3D models, the work on textures alone is far greater than what was done on glyphs. What used to be a reusable library for similar types of games is now a massive framework on top of each individual game engines framework, potentially millions of lines of code whereas games were previously lucky to reach 100k. You're talking 4GB releases where 4mbit-4mbyte releases used to be common.

While I do still think $100 is a reasonable cap, and that I'd prefer to see PC games at an $80 cap, the evidence supporting your argument certainly could do with a lot of work.

Personally, I rarely buy games anymore. Since Quake 3, I've bought maybe one PC game per year on average. If the prices were lower that number would certainly be higher. Console games, even though they get less play time and cost more, I've tended to buy a lot more of.

my theory is that the price went up when the dollar was s*** and they never bothered to bring the price down... in saying that, HN, EB (back when they were electronic boutique), Dick Smiths have been over charging gamers for years....

No shock here, buy overseas and you get the right price, buy in Aus you get f***ed in the ass. I would never spend over $100 on a game, no matter what. f*** I'm hard pressed to top $60.

I'm a little s***ty about the state of pricing between Australia and US for many things. One of which I found with Logitech, a brand we've recently stopped distributing at work for this reason..... Please take note of the RRP's.


US Site...
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/remotes/universal_remotes/devices/5874&cl=us,en

AU Site...
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/remotes/universal_remotes/devices/5874&cl=au,en


Now tell me, what part of logistics, distribution or retailing makes their price so significantly different to ours? I know we're a smaller market, but it's not like they're manufacturing the product any different for us here. It's all the same thing! The only major difference is power adapter... *shrug*

I'm not good at linkypoos..

Yeah we get ripped on so many things because of the best beaches tax. We have the most awesome beaches and all other countries are so jealous they make us pay more :(

The problem is, stupid vendors in Australia (IT Hardware Distribution wise) don't realise this just drives people to parallel import the product instead. Apple is facing this already, with quite a number of retailers importing from OS instead, because Apple gives a maximum of 10% margin here to their Resellers, from their wholesale cost to apple's web-store retail price.

I wonder how much this is happening in the gaming sector too? if prices on games from offshore are significantly cheaper, what's stopping any retailer bringing it overseas in large numbers? All Interactive Distribution (one of the distributors for selected brand console and PC games, and sub-distributor for many) only really allows a 8% markup from Wholesale to RRP. This is really a pathetic figure in terms of retail profit margins.

The vendors of this product really have some explaining to do :S

Sorry but I dont have time to read every post in this thread.

I wanted to add my argument against those saying that piracy puts up the price of games. I don't beleive that for a second.

The five games i've purchased in the last year were ALL purchased because they were (for me) afforadble. Here they are.

1 - Left for dead (4 pack - worked out to be like $20 each)
2 - Left for dead 2 (special weekend - something like $40)
3 - GTA 4 - (Special weekend - about $30 or less)
4 - Borderlands (4 pack - about $30 each)
5 - Battlefield bad company (4 pack - $40 each i think)

Those purchases were made possible by the price being withing range. Otherwise, I simple cannoy spend that much on (sometimes) a game that wont have any replayability past the first completion of the game.

Harmony® One Advanced Universal Remote
USD 249.99
AUD 499.95

Harmony® 700 Advanced Universal Remote
USD 149.99
AUD 299.95

Wow, the awesome beach tax has been hiked a fair bit.
It shouldn't even cost that much if there each one of these remotes was gold plated and came individually gift wrapped with a big bow of red ribbon.