60 dollars is too much for a game that might last 10-12 hours in single player, if a game has a strong multiplayer aspect it is worth more in my opinion but still not 60 dollars...

Like someone else pointed out, for FPS fans $60 isn't a bad price. I bought Battlefield 2 and have over 100 hours into it and am not close to done with it. In addition, others usually play the games I buy (relatives, friends) and I play theirs.

Based on entertainment value alone, $60 is worth every penny, even considering the $1,500-$2,000 for the computer itself.

Pirates irk me, and their arguments about price often ring hollow. There are many pirates out there that wouldn't pay $10 for the game; free is always a better price. Just admit you're a cheap bastard with a weak moral fiber and be over with it.

Only game worth $60 would be Half Life 2, I still remember playing through that on launch and being completely blown away at how involved everything was. If all $60 games could give you such an immersive environment with eye popping graphics, then they would be worthwhile. But $60 for Madden 2020 edition that will drop in price in 3 months? Come on now, what a waste.

$60 games? Hell, Q4 was $50 at launch so I snapped it right up, and I liked it. And I'm holding out on Gun until it's $30 or $20, and I'm going to keep watch on the gamer reviews to see if it's worth a discounted price.

This is where I try to keep this short and say that EA's sweatshop tactics have destroyed the industry.

Games like Mario Bros. were great, because they had limited content yet were addictive enough to have awesome replay value.

Remeber that we want to play "games" not just "interactive films", and developers should spend more time on the gameplay than anything else. Yet, it seems that companies these days are forced to just plough through content at the expense of gameplay in order to meet budgets and time constraints *cough* KOTOR2 *cough*.

To be fair, if you took out all of the fancy features of UT2K4, you could emulate it with a few 3rd part vehicle mods for the original UT, yet in 5 years, all that has happened has been graphical and content updates that has done nothing for gameplay.

I guess none of you would have been interested in the Neo Geo system years ago where games were around $200 bucks apiece I believe.

I'm not sure at all what you guys consider gameplay...does replay value figure into this at all? I've played $20 games like Serious Sam where you can plow through in a few hours, but play it over and over and over because it's so damn good.

I do that to this day with Max Payne, which was short but whenever I'm looking to kill 6-8 hours, I'll just plow through it...

Short, intense games are infinitely replayable, and I'd gladly pay even "full game" price of $50 or $60 for that kind of experience.

Then again, when you can buy a full season of Fridends for $25 at Wal-Mart you're hard-pressed to find a better, cheaper way to kill 12 hours

I'm so far behind in playing games that by the time I get to them they are usually less than $20.

I will let all of those people with too much time and money on there hands pay $60 so they can get there first. Not sure how that makes the game any better, but to each his own.

BTW, I just finished Halo2 last week and now I'm working on Halo :-)

Here's a thought; how about writing a game that doesn't take so much programmer and artist time to make content for? Games are getting shorter these days because it takes so much extra work to create the levels and artwork for them. I'd rather have a game with last-generation graphics and plenty of fun gameplay. Judging from surveys I've seen where a majority of the respondents listed graphics as one of the most important factors, however, I'm apparently in the minority, for some strange reason.

How about making the primary game and initial content available for a reasonable price, and then making additional content that can be purchased optionally? That way you can try the game without spending as much (I'm not saying free though) and if it is one that you really like, then you can pay-as-you-go for extra content (levels, maps, opponents, whatever.) I think I would try more games that way. And I don't mind paying for extra content for a game that I already know I like and I know I will actually get use from the extra content.
The downside to that from the companies point of view is that a lot of customers will say "I only paid $30 for the original game, why should I have to pay $15 just for some more levels?"

Hmm, I can go to the cinema, and for the grand price of £6 I can see a movie that may be up to 2 hours long. £3/hour isn't that good now, is it?

A game might cost £40 new. If you play it for a total of 14 hours, then it's better value than seeing the film, in terms of money/hour. Of course, it's got to be a good game to be played more than a few hours, but if games increase in price, then people will certainly be doing more try-before-they-buy behaviour, game rentals will increase certainly.

I know that some people put hundreds of hours into games like GTA-SA. That's pretty good value. Even sports/driving games, in multiplayer, are good investments, as you'll play them a lot.

Even standard first person wander-about and kill stuff games are worthwhile if there is a lot of gameplay, multiplayer games and things to discover in game. The old 'secrets found' thing.

And it's all a bit more cerebral than watching TV or a movie...

If in future, they plan to increase $70 for each latest games. Then I will can't buy it possible until its price drop like $50-$20. :-/

I think the most expensive game I've ever paid for was Secret of Mana: The multitap was only sold with Bomberman, so I bought that game almost exclusively for the device, so that me and my pals could do some 3-player real-time-fighting-in-an-RPG action.

And by golly, I'd do it again.

What I can't understand is why I would pay for some "better-graphs, one extra feature rehash with the next year's label on the box" type of game.

That's the problem of the industry: "sell the lame titles at the same price as the good ones", not to mention the "Enter the Matrix" type of franchise-abuse. Granted, movies do that too, but a bad game will set you back 6-7 times the amount you'd waste on a bad movie.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1...

Just rent them.

and that whole econ 101/ supply/demand thing. And also that thing about the inflation rate, and why not, the deficit.

The $60 games remind me of some Nintendo 64 games that cost up to $80 (!).

The most I would ever pay is $65.00, anything over that would be complete insanity...

Games provide an unique niche of entertainment, one with longterm interactions. At least that's the way I look at it. To me, episodic games are a departure from what games should be.

No I don't if its a hit game. And I mean a HIT game. Should your common run of the mill garbage charge that? No. But, the key here is to stop being ravenous consumers who wait in line at a store to buy a game.

As long as they have a need to feed, they'll feel free to charge whatever the market will keep paying...

we already pay USD $71 for games here, and I bet when they release xbox360 games they will try to charge even more.

I would buy the shorter games if the AI is bit improved and there is some randomness to it. For example most of the FPS games spawn enemies at the exact same location every time, this just kills the game's replay value.

A couple of things to consider:

-A movie ticket usually runs about $7 to $9 for about 2 hours worth of entertainment (if you include the movie preview, that is [chuckle])

-And Audio CD would run you about $10 to $15 for about 45 minutes worth of entertainment, though replay value should be immediately high because you get to keep it.

-A movie DVD (newly released movie) would run anywhere between $12 to $25 for about 4 hours worth of entertanment (extras, commentaries, and MORE movie previews [chuckle])

So, here's the deal when it comes to Movie Tickets, Music CDs, and DVD Movies. Most people think that movie tickets should probably be $2 to $3 dollars cheaper than what they already are. Music CDs should be about $2 cheaper, and DVD movies should also be anywhere from $2 to $5 cheaper.

When it comes to Video Games, these action/adventure games are clocking in around 10 to 15 hours, and they currently cost $50. I don't agree with video games being 4 hours in length, because what they are basically saying is Episodic Content. They are not going to build entirely new game engines, design whole worlds, characters, voice and sound, all of it for under $20. They are going to sell you a game in 3 to 4 parts and sell it for $20 each, making it an overall $60 to $80.

Games should probably be 10 hours long, especially for those that do not have alot of time to spare. They should not be 4 hours long. As good looking as we expect games to be, I think that they'd either do one of two things, 1.) If its going to be a short game, then its going to have a short budget, and expect some games to lose their "flash" in graphics, 2.)They're going to be using the same technology to make short games on the cheap to make sure that production costs remain low.

Also, online components should not really count as "infinite hours of gameplay." If it isn't a robust online component, then you have just as good a chance of playing it for a couple of hours and then dropping it altogether as you would playing it for hundreds of hours.

I think online is a cheap cop-out for some games putting up a half-hearted singleplayer component. Halo 2 is of one of the most ultimate examples of this. Single-player is the bread-and-butter, then create a good multiplayer, or make it an expansion pack later on when you finally have created a great multiplayer. The prices for both things seperate would be justified.

I think that's a semi bs choice to make, the problem with games seems to be that so much emphasis is put on brute force eye candy instead of finding more efficient ways to do stuff - like, say, diablo's random dungeon generator was a good idea imho, with some work in that direction the concept could apply to generating random tree formations etc imho. Beside a suitable amount of emphasis on the eye candy part of games - which I could care less about if the game itself was boring anyway - creative game design is really taking a back seat in game designs these days it seems, which makes most of the stuff coming out these days just plain same old same old, or a buncha clone sequels with a few extra menu buttons and an enhanced knife texture.

I games were designed with less emphasis on absolute eye candy and more on gameplay and simple yet effective concepts - japanese game designers seem to still bring a few creative games out to market every now and then, though not as much as ten years ago - then games wouldn't have to be so expensive cause you wouldn't need to bump the amount of graphic artists from 5 to 150 anymore - maybe 15 instead - and the good programmers would be the ones that take center stage when he produces a more creative concept - Sims is a nice example of a new concept imho, not the best game from my perspective, but creative it was. I can't wait for more of this sort of creativity from such designers.

Of course from a business perspective that's not a great idea, sequels and remakes are great for milking a genre - Tomb Raider anyone? - and going with proven, even if overused, concepts while just beefing up eye candy here and there for the most part is a more reliable way to get a return on overall investment as opposed to starting a new risky venture with each game that comes out.

Personally I'm so bored with current games that I just went ahead and picked up Guild Wars simply cause it's an mmorpg with free online gameplay that I knew would keep me entertained for a few weeks as opposed to a couple of days - which is what I got from Doom3 and Farcry. Looked great while it lasted.

Just my 2 cents.

Of course $60 is too much. Are you crazy? Minimum wage is what, $6 an hour, and if a game has 10 hours of play, then you have to spend more time working to pay for the game than you actually will play it.

How about the Neo Geo games? Remember those gigantic catridges? I think the games were something like $100-150 or more each. Of course the technology was the same as their arcade systems and the graphics/sound were amazing for the time. Too bad the controller was pretty horrible.

I'm with the "shorter, more intense games" crowd. "20 hours of gameplay" is kind of a hollow statement when about 10 hours of that is padding put there by the developers to make the game seem better value.

Best game I've played recently, in terms if sheer fun, has to be Lumines (or Digicrack, as it should be known).

Yes it's too damn expensive for people to pay $60. It isn't going to work and trust me I have my reasons.

#1. Games from 1990 and up were on cartridges. Little plastic toys with memory chips and circuit boards sat inside these things. Some cartridges even came with CPUs to help the console out. So you technically bought mini computers for $50 back then. Compared to CDs and DVDs today which are peanuts to make.

#2. Only people who preorder games will buy them for $60. The rest of us will wait for the game to drop in price like it usually does. New or used games still work and they still play. Mommy and daddy who have high paying jobs and will buy anything Joe/Bob/Sue wants will not care for $10 more. Then again there's the rest of the gaming community who isn't so lucky.

#3. Don't forget about pirates. The number 1 reason why the pirate exists is because the cost of games is too much. Consoles like the 360 have hard drives and usb ports. It's just a matter of time before we start using USB flash drives to allow us to hack the 360. Then of course there's the mod chips.

There is no reason why games must go beyond $50. Hell I've thought $50 was too much especially for some of the crap games they've put out. If they produced better games with a more original story that didn't have repetitive gameplay then I'd say yes to $60.

Otherwise I'd just hold my breath and wait for the price of the game I want to go down in value. After all we have games like WOW to keep us busy for a long time. I'm in no hurry to go buy the latest and greatest games.

$60 is far too much for games, why do we have to pay for voice acting in games? sure in certain cases it is reasonable, like when trying to create a very atmospheric story based game.
But when you think about games like the old Goldeneye for the N64, was there any voices, and just how fun was that game in comparison to the later Perfect Dark which had the voices?
As for graphics developments im sort of for that on the other hand as i think visuals have the highest potential to create a more hightend experience with in a game.

If I pay $60(CDN) for a game, I expect more then a 24 hours worth of plot.

When I was younger and had less responsibility (and even less money), the longer the game the better.

Now that I'm older, gaming is more of quick-fix than a weekend-killer for me.
I have games now that may never get finished because of the amount of time necessary to finish them. While I'll live with that burden, it's still upsetting that so much money was spent on them and I'm lucky to see them a quarter through.

If it was possible to have shorter games at a compromised price, those may fit lifestyles like mine better with a win-win situation for me and the developers.

If this is what he meant by his statement, I fully back his idea.