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$60 Games Are Here To Stay
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:33 AM
from the damn-you-tantalizing-game-titles dept.
from the damn-you-tantalizing-game-titles dept.
Next Generation explores the price jump for 'next generation' titles, looking into the success of the $60 price point for videogames. They have a copious number of graphs and charts to support their findings: "Even without Guitar Hero II, prices in 2007 are still at historically high levels. In January, fully four of the top 10 games sold for $60 or more. In February, that jumped to five $60 games, and the average rose accordingly. While there were four $60 games in March, they shared the top 10 with two Nintendo DS games which brought the average down sharply. This happened again in March -- the month of Pokemon -- and also in May."
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$50 games (Score:5, Funny)
Re:$50 games (Score:5, Insightful)
$50 is a sweet spot for me for regular video games (PC games and Console games). $20-30 is my sweet spot for mobile games (DS, PSP). Will I pay $60+ for a game? Sure, if I really wanted to play it. But if prices start going for $60, I won't be buying as much as I use too or I'll be waiting for games to get old or become used before purchasing.
One of the benefits of this 'new' user created mods for games, like Warcraft/Starcraft Maps, Counter-Strike, Flash Games (like ones from AddictingGames.com), I have lots of other options for games. Also, while I know lots of people who are 100% against subscription games (like MMO's), I'm pretty happy with games like LOTRO's whom I've gotten a special "pre-order" subscription price of $10/month (or $200 lifetime, which I didn't take as I generally have never played an MMO for almost 2 years straight). I'm happy with that kind of pricing. Much more happy than $15/month. Such that I'm willing to keep my subscription active even if I'm going to be MIA for most of a month. The amount of entertainment hours I get for my $ are amazing... if you considering spending $10 to see a 2-hour film at the theater and another $10 for popcorn and soda.
Likewise, the DS is proving to be a super fun system and games prices are often very awesome at $20 for things like Brain Age 2, etc. I'm also a fan of loading Warcraft 3 back on my PC and playing some MOD games, for no monthly fees or download prices.
With developers and gaming companies seeing the benefit of downloaded content (Wii, PS3, 360 are now all offering DL-able games, while the DS allows you to temporarily download the game from a friend to play multi-player), I hope to see future systems continue to allow more and more user created content that will give players a much cheaper option of games to play. I know there are plenty of flash games I'd enjoy just picking up and playing for a short time.
I guess there has become a big 'casual' trend in gaming and I know I enjoy it, despite having been 'hard-core' at times (non-stop multiple day MMO gaming, Counter-Strike competitions/tourney's, etc). Probably why Nintendo's Wii strategy is really hitting the mark today.
Cheers,
Fozzy
Parent
Re:$50 games (Score:5, Interesting)
The flip side is, what if I found a $50 game that could keep me entertained for 18 months. Well, that'd be pretty awesome, but hasn't happened for me yet. At $60 for a game, I need to get 4 months of solid entertainment (10hr+ per week) to match the return on investment I get from an MMO(@$15/mo).
I did, however, refuse to pay $50 up front for WoW, knowing that I'd have to pay monthly fees beyond that. That seemed ridiculous to me.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We usually call this living in our Mums basement on Slashdot
Re:$50 games (Score:5, Insightful)
Adjusting for inflation, it's like $200.
Adjusting for my buying power as a kid, it's like $34 million.
Parent
Re:$50 games (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not against a $10 if it's JUST for the game. But when you take all that into consideration, and remember that a lot of these $60 aren't "new" games so much as "updates" (EA also comes to mind here, too), then the price increase gets worse and worse and worse.
So yes, even though a $50 game in 1985 costs the same as $96.82 in 2007, once you take all of that into account, the price difference dissipates to the point of being nearly irrelevant.
Parent
$50 games on the Odyssey 2! (Score:3, Insightful)
Now last year,
What a Revelation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a Revelation... (Score:5, Interesting)
Compared to a great many other entertainment options, on a pure hour-per-dollar basis, videogames are a pretty good deal. (Still doesn't stack up to an afternoon at your local fine art museum, though.)
Parent
Re:What a Revelation... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
More like a revolution... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, I'll give you that, but can you explain why this is the opposite trend in the PC hardware industry?
Case in point, in 1992 I ordered what was then a top of the line PC:
* 486 - 66 MHz / 8 Meg memory
* 240 Meg hard drive.
* No CDROM
* No sound card.
* No networking or modem.
* Diamond Stealth 64 video card (Vesa local bus)
* Cheap case with floppy.
* 14 inch VGA muti-sync monitor.
* Mouse/keyboard.
* $2,500.00
This past Sunday 7/26 I just purchased my new baby:
* Intel D975XBX2 (Bad AXE) mobo with a load of stuff on board.
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX
* Intel QX6700 (Core 2 quad core 2.66GHz)
* 850 Watt SLI power supply.
* EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Meg video card.
* 4 Gig DDR2 800 MHz RAM (PC2 6400).
* 320 Gig SATA 7200 RPM drive.
* Lian-Li PC1200B II case.
* 20X CD/DVD burner SATA.
* Windows Vista Ultimate.
* $2,800.00
Please tell me why inflation and rising development costs didn't have an effect on these prices?
As an engineer I can tell you that moving from the hardware technology of 1992 to 2007 was also "a lot of work" and required "a lot of resources" and "a lot of money". Yet based on inflation, I got a system that just crushed the older one into the ground.
Hmmm...
Parent
Re:More like a revolution... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, I'll give you that, but can you explain why this is the opposite trend in the PC hardware industry?
Case in point, in 1992 I ordered what was then a top of the line PC:
* 486 - 66 MHz / 8 Meg memory
* 240 Meg hard drive.
* No CDROM
* No sound card.
* No networking or modem.
* Diamond Stealth 64 video card (Vesa local bus)
* Cheap case with floppy.
* 14 inch VGA muti-sync monitor.
* Mouse/keyboard.
* $2,500.00
This past Sunday 7/26 I just purchased my new baby:
* Intel D975XBX2 (Bad AXE) mobo with a load of stuff on board.
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX
* Intel QX6700 (Core 2 quad core 2.66GHz)
* 850 Watt SLI power supply.
* EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Meg video card.
* 4 Gig DDR2 800 MHz RAM (PC2 6400).
* 320 Gig SATA 7200 RPM drive.
* Lian-Li PC1200B II case.
* 20X CD/DVD burner SATA.
* Windows Vista Ultimate.
* $2,800.00
Please tell me why inflation and rising development costs didn't have an effect on these prices?
As an engineer I can tell you that moving from the hardware technology of 1992 to 2007 was also "a lot of work" and required "a lot of resources" and "a lot of money". Yet based on inflation, I got a system that just crushed the older one into the ground.
Hmmm...
Look at the quality of hardware. A computer circa 1990 would be heavy, lots of metal, durable, and ussually higher quality in the materials and workmanship. Today Computers are flimsy, have the same or higher fail rate, and are made from elss material with poorer workmanship.
In general the same thing happening to Cars happen to Computers. They are cheaper because manufacturing advances have dropped the cost of manufacturing. They are also flimsier and generally less well made. They may contain better technology but the amoutn of effort and resources that go into one has been reduced thus the price has been reduced. A common consumer grade car has gone down in price after adjustment for inflation over it's corresponding version 40 years ago. Ditto with computers, although the rate of change is greater.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention the "things were better then" nonsense is idealization of the past. As someone with various machines in the 80s I can honestly tell you they built them like mass-produced crap then too.
Re:More like a revolution... (Score:4, Interesting)
You have no idea what you're talking about. Look at the amount of scheduled maintenance for a car from the 70s vs a car today. Look at the fit and finish of the components. Look at their reliability.
There's nothing "less well made" or "flimsier" about today's cars. Compare a Corolla from 2000 to a Corolla from 1980. Or a Five Hundred from today to the Galaxie 500 from 1968.
It's not unusual to go 100,000 miles today without any major maintenance (beyond oil/oil filters/air filters/tires) and no major mechanical problems. Such an occurence was a rare thing with cars from the 60s or 70s.
Having more steel doesn't make a car "better made".
Parent
They did not go up in price, the dollar went down. (Score:5, Interesting)
Games now have many international ties (design, programming, etc). Because the U.S. dollar is being inflated as fast as it is (and has been since 1913), more dollars means that the dollars out there are worth less, especially versus foreign currencies. This means that prices seem to cost most.
The flipside of inflation is that some people, especially the banking elite, get the new money earlier than others -- so it is usually the middle and lower classes who are harmed with prices inflating faster than their wages do. Eventually wages DO increase because of the easy money out there, but usually it is too little, too late.
Prices go up in any inflationary market. Prices also go up because of a limited supply for a highly-demanded item. Generally, though, in a market with a currency backed by something other than fiat/force, prices go down slowly -- soft deflation. The benefit of this is that you actually can SAVE your money and earn value on it, unlike today where even the stock market gains don't keep up with the TRUE cost of inflation.
Sidenote: Government inflation figures are lies, plain and simple. Find some old credit card statements and see what inflation really is in your life. You may be surprised that it is 10-12% annually for the past 3-4 years.
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So untrue. Deflation is fine -- if you sit on your money, it doesn't become worthless. But this also gives you reason to invest properly and wisely, to get a better return than just what the deflation offers. Right now, easy credit and easy money have created all the bubbles we've experienced since 1913, including the Great Depres
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You conveniently leave out the causes of the depressions and bubbles that occurred prior to the great depression (hint: speculation does not require fiat c
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I didn't. The Federal Reserve went on a massive inflationary credit/money creation spree from 1924 to 1929. This easy money gave everyone, even the shoe shiners, a huge increase in the value of the stock markets. But it was that easy money that made the stock markets rise, not actual increased profitability of companies invested. In 1924, a few early investors had early access to the new easy credit. The stock markets ticked up, and as that new money trickled down into the economy, more and more people invested -- causing the market to swell artificially even more so. The Fed did nothing but create more and more credit, which flew into the stock market pushing it higher and higher. Government inflation caused the market to bubble. The Fed tried to control the market boom by restricting that easy money, so those who were holding the stocks (namely, a decent portion of the population) had no one to sell to -- no more easy credit meaning no one else to buy those stocks. Quickly people sold off stocks, but the banks were restricted in paying out deposits because the Fed was trying to deflate the currency base.
The Fed caused the Great Depression.
The boom-bust cycle is nothing new, and not a product of inflation. Inflation is part of the boom-bust cycle.
I'm amazed people give you any trust or value, honestly. Inflation causes the boom-bust cycle as I easily explained in this post and in previous ones in the same threads. Inflation, the creation of money, gives people false indicators of a growing market. In a free market, stocks go up in value because they either pay more dividends, or because the company is truly worth more money now or in the near future. In an inflationary economy, stocks go up usually because another sucker used easy credit/money to buy stocks from a previous sucker, at a higher price. That's boom-bust. It is NOT part of a healthy economy.
I'll go out on a limb and say that over time, the boom-bust cycle is healthy. It promotes advancement during boom cycles, then weeds out the weak during bust cycles. In the long run, the boom-bust cycle promotes technological advances that result in increased standard-of-living across the board. The key is to mitigate the bust cycles so that the economy doesn't collapse.
Society blossomed during a stable currency base during the Industrial Revolution. Why? Companies and individuals found ways to become more efficient, introduce more products and services to the market, and reduce prices for everyone (deflation). This happened pre-fed, during a strong dollar that didn't fall more than a few percent in value over 150 years. The dollar has lost 98% of value since 1913, because of inflation/the Fed. In a strong dollar economy, people still create, but do so wisely because they find profitability in efficiency or new inventions. In an inflationary economy, companies sell nothing or junk (dotcom, housing) because they have easy access to easy credit, used to fool foolish investors.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
* This book was great up to the point where the author reveals
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:2)
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, enough already. You've been posting this gold-standard bullshit for years, and it's never made any sense. You have no credible sources for any of this. Give it up.
You've also posted a lot of mystical pseudoscience babble about gold. It's just a metal. Inasmuch as it has little to no innate utility to anyone, it's a substitute for actual goods of value in the same way that paper money is, or any other currency standard.
more dollars means that the dollars out there are worth less, especially versus foreign currencies.
Except for the obvious logical fallacy that foreign currencies have also abandoned the gold standard?
prices go up because your government decides every day to ruin the value of your money.
That was the only interesting thing you mentioned. Yes, money you hoard devalues at a long term average of about 4% per year. And that's a good thing - it's better for the economy to have money actively invested rather than sitting in a mattress. You'll note that time periods with low or negative inflation were times of currency crisis - because the wealthy hoarded their money and little was left in circulation to sustain the economy.
Parent
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:4, Insightful)
He does mention that our economy is inflating somewhat rapidly, which can be very easily verified [exchange-rates.org] by taking a look at some graphs plotting the exchange rates for US dollars.
Whether or not this is an explicitly bad thing is a subject of debate. From what I understand, inflation is generally considered to be a good thing in small amounts, and that the US is on the brink of passing the cusp of these "small amounts".
Take a look at what happened in Argentina. Their currency became worthless almost overnight due to poor economic practices (nothing to do with the gold standard).
The grandparent poster then draws a bunch of conclusions from the assumption that the dollar is inflating, all of which appear pretty sound in the context of other economic inferences. If the dollar's worth less, as in any economic disaster, the people with the least money are obviously going to be the most affected. Because people have to eat, wages will then hopefully rise to try and catch up.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
The extension is that fiat currency is to blame, and that the gold standard would solve the problem. However, since he's been lambasted so much for his crackpot theories in re: the gold standard, he no longer refers to it by name in his posts.
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:4, Insightful)
The dot com bubble happened because of INFLATION? The dot com bubble made Many Many Many people wealthy, and kept the economy going for quite a few years. Then the charlatans became too common and the economy corrected. Inflation had ZERO to do with it. Over eager investment in stupid ideas is why the bubble burst.
House is the exact same thing. Stupid investors bought bad investments because they thought they could. Good for the sellers. Good for for me who fixed up and flipped two houses and then got the hell out of the market. For a while the cheap money helped a lot of people. Then people got stupid and it had to stop. That has absolutely nothing to do with inflation. That has to do with human nature and emotional purchasing.
A boom/bust cycle is NORMAL and HEALTHY. Every thing in the world is cyclical. If you have no cycle, you have no growth period and no correction period. If there is no cycle, the economy becomes stagnant and unless you already have money there is no way to earn good money. Sitting on my cash in the hopes that deflation will cause its value to grow slowly is a great plan to avoid risk and an even better plan to avoid reward.
In a cyclic economy the bulls make money, the bears can make money and the pigs get slaughtered.
In a flat non-boom/bust economy only the pigs who already have money can make money and anyone who wants to make money either through working hard or through buying smart has no opportunity to do either.
Don't be a dogma-quoter. Use your brain about what caused something to happen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
False again. I'll chase your blatant flasehoods throughout the entire thread, because your misinformation is ridiculous. How about the Tulip bubble? The land bubble of the 1730s? Neither were govnerment created.
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:5, Interesting)
If I give you 1 dollar and want my value back at the end of the year with 4% inflation, then I need 1.04(I'd probably want some sort of a return for depriving myself of the use of the dollar, but for simplicity we can leave that out).
If actual inflation is 5%, I lost value, because to get my value back I should get 1.05, so if inflation goes up, the receiver of a loan wins.
If actual inflation is 3%, I gained value, because I really only needed to get 1.03, so if inflation goes down, the lender of a loan wins.
Inflation is bad because it makes it hard for 2 parties to agree on a mutually beneficial exchange when uncertainty is introduced like this. They can plan on an equal exchange, and then inflation risk can fuck it up.
Deflation is the same, it's just smaller numbers but the same effect. If the value is dropping at unpredictable rates, it stunts business because the 2 parties can't depend on a fair exchange. The information of knowing it will be stable is important to efficient resource distribution and investment in an economy.
So what is important is not inflation or deflation, what is important is how much variance is in the inflation or deflation.
Inflation makes the number bigger, deflation makes it smaller. But as long as the percentage of change is steady and predictable, it has no effect on the exchange in value. However, large inflation numbers tend to carry more variance, while low numbers are more stable. So that's the job of the Fed. To fight inflation so that business people can do their thing without worrying about instability fucking up the exchange they're negotiating.
Some say some small inflation is good, because it keeps pace with the growth of actual value in the country. GDP(just one of several measurements of a nation's value) for example, for the U.S it's been growing around 2-4%, so to keep the right amount of money flowing to represent this increase of gross domestic product, the idea is to keep the amount of money growing at 2-4%. Not everyone agrees with this, I don't see maintaining the speed of money circulation(How fast 1 dollar circulates) is worth intentionally keeping a level of inflation(Wouldn't the value of money change appropriately to adjust for changes in the speed of money circulation?)
However, a gold standard is just a different form of currency. Now a nation's currency growth rate is tied to...mining rocks? The currency itself is worthless, it's the value behind the currency that matters. A gold standard wouldn't help combat this fluctuation, it just ties it to a different fluctuation, mining. The real goal here is to keep the value stable, which is what the fed should do. They're trying to keep it steady at the current value, which is fine if they can pull it off. I'd be happier if they kept it steady at 0% inflation.
The more pressing issue is trade deficit. Inflation should be moderated by the Fed as it is currently. I don't like the idea of upsetting this tender balance. As much as I agree with many of Ron Paul's stances, abolishing the Fed for a gold standard is a dealbreaker since I believe it would bring little good to the country, while potentially wreaking catastrophic results. Another global Great Depression sort of catastrophe.
My explanation is rough, I know, but hopefully someone else can clarify this better than I.
Parent
Why some inflation is good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, small inflation forces people to either spend their money, or save it in interest returning investments, or invest it... you can't sit on it. Small deflation causes people to sit on their money. If you look at the cyclical nature of the computer industry, the fact that the computer industry is deflationary has caused all those hiccups. For consumer goods, the built up supply chains of distribution work fine... doesn't matter if it takes 3-4 weeks to get the shampoo from the factory to the store to your home, nobody loses money... recently companies have gotten so good at just-in-time manufacturing, that they decided to worry about this, NOT because of deflation and collecting less money at the end, but because the finance department realized that the "inventory" that they are shipping around uses working capital (if I carry $20m in inventory, that is $20m that I am either borrowing or not investing, so there is a "cost" of the inventory). However, in the computer industry, Dell was the first to move to just-in-time, and decimated everyone... not because of carrying costs which are small, but computers deflate at 2% a month or so, so if it took two months to get the product there, they lost 4% of the value in the channel.
Basically, small inflation is devastating, because it means that the "real" risk free rate is negative. If expected inflation is 3%, and people expect a 2% rate of return for 0-risk, then the nominal interest rate for treasury bills is 5%. If inflation rises to 4%, then the interest rate foes to 6%, with no major change. If instead we get 3% deflation, then the "interest rate" SHOULD become -1% (-3% deflation + 2% required rate of return = -1%)... Now, who would buy a bond for -1%? Instead the money sits in the mattress. As a result, you might see an interest rate of 1% or 2%, but that means that the real interest rate is 4%.
A higher real interest rate means that people require a higher return for "risk," which means that bond yields go up (making it more expensive for companies to borrow money, which means that they don't invest as much in growth. It means that stock prices go down, because stock price today = NPV(future returns), and the higher the interest rate, the lower the NPV.
Basically, deflation => higher REAL interest rates => slower economic growth, plus deflation => lower expenditures while people hoard cash => slower economic growth. Deflation is VERY bad. Look at Japan's long recession, they couldn't get out of the cycle, because once you lower the interest rates to 0%, there is nowhere to go. When the US economy went into recession, the Fed was able to lower rates from 5.25% to 1%, which sped up the economy. The reason they moved it up so fast, they were scared that if another attack happened or something else slowed the economy, they had nowhere to move, they COULDN'T lower interest rates more, which meant severe recession or depression to fix things.
The Fed's ability to affect rates lets them tweak the economy. The tweaking works fine in normal conditions (moving between 3% and 5% GDP growth is manageable, once you get outside that range, the interest rate can't control it). The American people like to know that each year they will generally be a little better off. In the late 90s, you had red hot growth, which everyone enjoyed, but when the economy slowed to absorb those gains, people decided that a mild recession was a severe depression.
Look at the housing market, people expected 4%-5% growth, inflation + 1%, and while they enjoyed the 10%-20% growth while it lasted, it forced people into doing stupid moves to get ahead of the game... Now prices drop 2%-4% in a year, a minor fluctuation, and people are talking about a market collapse.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fantastic questions, by the way.
1) Why don't bond purchasers demand a higher premium (interest rate) for loaning money that's going to depreciate that fast -- and they *have* noticed that the government inflates the money supply by now.
Mostly because past history has shown that major losses have been covered by the government through future taxes. Also, we have an entity in the U.S. called the Plunge Protection Team which uses U.S. owned assets to buy stocks ands bonds to prev
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mostly because past history has shown that major losses have been covered by the government through future taxes.
Yes, that explains why bond purchasers are sure they'll get the promised money back. It doesn't explain why they're so willing to lend at *negative* inflation-adjusted rates, and it was your claims about inflation that I was objecting to. In other words, you've explained the absence of a credit premium, but not an inflation premium.
Impossible because inflationary income causes people to invest unwisely, so inflation moves from market to market. ...
That doesn't matter. If you're correct about 12% inflation, you should be able to look at a time history of commodities and say, "okay, this basket, which represents a typic
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do (Score:4, Funny)
(That's what you get for discussing economy with geeks...)
Parent
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Inflation (Score:4, Informative)
Why in my day... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(And it were uphill both ways, etc...)
until... (Score:3, Interesting)
$60 games are here to stay New. If you need your fix RFN, go for it. Me, I'll wait until I can pick 'em up at my local used game store on the cheap, though that's assuming I ever get a next-gen console in the first place - the best part about the PS3 coming out was the way the prices of PS2 games sunk through the floor. I'm gettin' a lot of milage out of that.
--Triv
And this is why (Score:3, Insightful)
Still. I refuse to pay 60 dollars for a game (unless it is something like Bioshock or Mass Effect or Fable 2...I intend to purchase those.)
Am I a criminal? Perhaps. Is what I'm doing morally wrong and illegal? Perhaps. Do I give a fuck? no.
Alternate title: (Score:2)
If $60 games are here to stay... (Score:2)
I buy few games, and mostly used (Score:2)
3.5 years of data, I'm convinced (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, look at the prices for N64 games. They generally retailed for $60 new. CD based games brought the price down to $50 (new) for two generations. The better margin on distribution medium made its way into production value for games. Now development costs have finally eaten all of the margin we've gained from switching mediums and prices for games have gone up.
As for why video games (and attendant hardware) haven't really been affected by inflation throughout the years (consoles generally debut at $300-$400) is all thanks to Moore's Law. Prices were coming down as fast as the value of the dollar.
This is also why the PS3 is more expensive. Nintendo, and to some extent Microsoft, are leveraging Moore's Law to keep hardware prices at some level. Sony decided to go balls to the wall.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Trust me, Moore's law has absolutely ZERO to do with video game pricing. Nothing. Nada. Completely and utterly wrong.
If you're looking at a simply reason for this complex situation, it's simply supply and demand. More consoles, more gamers, more games being sold. That is a much more likely scenario. Of course, there's also more competition right now which certainly helps immense
Econ 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Econ 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
Basic Market Fact: The market for video games is larger than at any previous point in history. Every generation has seen a distinct rise in the number of overall units sold. (i.e. There's more pie for the competitors to divide.)
The Wii prices have remained stable because Nintendo is riding the economics of scale to combat inflationary costs. The XBox 360 and PS3 are so costly because they bucked these economics and embraced the cost of the disruptive HDTV technology. HDTV is at the edge of technology. It's what the CD-ROM was in the days of the 3DO. It's a high-technology item that still has limited scale to back it. Prices of the sets and microchips to support them are dropping, but not fast enough for the consoles to exist in a competitive region of scale vs. inflation.
Thus it's a gamble: Will the consumer pay more for cutting edge video-game technology?
The traditional market response has always been a negative. The 3DO priced itself out of a market, the Jaguar priced itself out of a market, the Saturn priced itself out of a market, the Turbo-Grafx priced itself out of a market, etc. The closest example of this trend being disrupted was the original Playstation. It was introduced to the market at $299, a full $100 more than the market was used to for new consoles. However, its price fell quickly and newer models dropped the unit cost by that much more. The majority of consoles were sold at a much lower price. The trend repeated with the PS2.
In fact, history shows that the inferior technology often wins out. Atari 2600 v. Intellivision, NES v. Master System, SNES/Genesis v. 3DO/Jaguar, Playstation v. N64, PS2 v. GameCube/XBox, etc.
All this adds up to bad news for overly expensive consoles. They are gambling on superior technology, but the market tends to not put much value there.
Parent
$60 games are here to stay *on the shelf* (Score:4, Funny)
Premium prices on premium products, film at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
You want the latest? You are willing to pay $60 for the latest? Then, supply-and-demand, retailers will charge you what you're willing to pay for what you want - and that, for the collective "you", is working out to about $60.
Go figure.
Re:piracy (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And in even more news... (Score:3, Funny)