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EA Boss Says Games Too Expensive
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Nov 01, 2007 04:24 PM
from the nice-of-you-to-notice dept.
from the nice-of-you-to-notice dept.
EA's John Riccitiello has been shaking things up at EA lately, with everything from layoffs to the purchase of BioWare. Now he's suggesting the company take some really drastic measures: make their games less expensive. "Riccitiello says the $31 billion gaming industry will suffer if it doesn't start to reevaluate its business model. Game executives at Sony, Microsoft and Activision must answer some tough questions in the coming years, like how long they can expect consumers to pay $59 for a video game. Riccitiello predicts the model will be obsolete in the next decade. 'In the next five years, we're all going to have to deal with this. In China, they're giving games away for free,' he says. 'People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt.' As more publishers transition to making games for online distribution, Riccitiello says he expects EA will experiment with different pricing models."
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Cheap games would be nice but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure some troll with mod points will kill my karma by me stating the obvious.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If this is an excuse to release crappier games, count me out. These things are expensive to make and I'd rather own 3 or 4 good games that have been invested in than 10 games that were just pounded out by some off-shore devs.
Yes, I'm sure some troll with mod points will kill my karma by me stating the obvious.
Amen. And would it kill them to make at least one or two games that aren't either about shooting-everything-that-moves, sports, or race cars?
If you can read this... 01110101 00100000 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100
No no no. A 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011, if you please.
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Geeks, on the other hand, are proud of it and wouldn't want to be any other way.
At any rate, from the usage I usually hear, "Nerd" is a derogatory comment, while "Geek" is a compliment. (Or maybe that's just the fellow weirdos I hang out with.)
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It's probably more of an excuse to move towards a "game license" system like other too well known software products. No longer will you own the game, you'll only own a license to play it on your machine and you'll have to continue to pay a monthly fee to play it. Sound familiar? Games will stop being on a disc and companies will start distributing them via download play only.
After all, the resale of their games really kills them. Sure, I pay $50-60 for a g
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Try some of the cheap games, they can be very good - and the gameplay is what makes the game. If you really think that spending thousands of dollars on graphics makes a game then it's your choice whether to buy it or not.
It's not just the graphics as much as the overall immersion in the game, and larger budget production games generally do a better job. There are many things that can be short-cut in order to produce a lower budget game like physics, writing, voice acting, graphics, ect. All of these are a part of the experience and if any single one is done poorly, the overall experience can be ruined. I agree that cheaper games "can" be addictive, but if you want a true experience then I'd have to agree with GPP because f
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The current trend is to spend the majority of the money on massive volumes of unique content for every level. Trying to fill 50 levels in one shot is a little unrealilstic. Perhaps they need to shorte
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I think they may be going there.
lol (Score:2, Insightful)
I never did. (Score:2, Insightful)
I only shop for games in the bargain bins. The most I've ever paid for a game was $10. And I save the cost of having to upgrade my machine every, what, six months.
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Not this old trope! (Score:2)
And I save the cost of having to upgrade my machine every, what, six months.
Yes yes.. very relavent to conversations FROM THE LAST DECADE. Dude.. computers don't change anywhere near as fast as they used to - I can get a machine now for $1000 dollars that will last me through the end of this decade, and probably into 2011.
I assembled my current box from parts of the old with a few upgrades - new proc and mobo, 1.5 gig of ram, and a new video card. I remember looking at this seething pile of power with a wistful sorrow - because I was leaving for a year in Europe a month later, a
Stop licencing sports then (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly the NBA & NHL both allow multiple game franchises and probably each is better for it.
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Licensing gives them far more sales than the licenses cost. If anything that's the *smartest* move they can make. Sports games, while no piece of cake to produce, have costs that are far less than, say, an RPG like Final Fantasy. How many stadiums do you have to make to satisfy your players, vs. how many entire WORLDS the RPG would need to have?
No, better spend $20M licensing + $5M producing mass-market game with millions of sales, than to spend $50M making an epic hardcore-gamer game that's going to top
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That may well be so, in which case why bitch about development costs when they are not the major source of expenditure?
Re:Stop licencing sports then (Score:5, Insightful)
Because not all genres are created equal. RTS games generally have lower dev costs than FPSes, due to the fact that FPS environments are scrutinized more closely, and tend to be disposable (once you've been through an area you don't go back). RPGs have the highest dev cost of all, due to players being accustomed to massive CG-quality cinematics and huge, epic storylines full of expensive voice acting, as WELL as non-recyclable maps.
I think the majority of the complaints here is that, the market's insatiable thirst for shinier graphics is ballooning the cost of content development, driving games to the edge where only "arena" based games like Sims, strategy games, and sports games, have a dev cost low enough to be profitable. HL1 was produced for a mere fraction of the cost to produce HL2, but somehow had a longer playtime. Before one blames Valve one should look at the level of workload difference between creating a scientist model in HL1, vs. the effort to do so in HL2.
One of the focuses right now for the industry is procedural content. How much can we reliably generate by machine without significantly impacting quality? Also we need to look at our toolchain, much of our tools are still too "dumb", exponentially increasing required artist hours for every extra little thing we add. The solution to our cost problem is technological - we need smarter tools that reduce man-hour cost, and we need procedural tools that can take a number of things away from humans entirely.
Parent
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Look who is talking (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this thing on? Can you hear me... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mad Libs (Score:2)
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OK, I say that jokingly -- although... I recently went on a retro-trip and picked one up on eBay for like $30, and spent almost an entire day playing the original Sonic in glorious 16-bit color. I haven't had that much *fun* with a video game for a long time.
I disagree with your point about story lines, however. Sure, there's little point in re-playing a story-based game once you've finished it once -- but
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I bought a PS2 and an Xbox, both of which are gathering dust.
I have both as well. The thing that really pisses me off is that new PS2 games still cost $30 to $50. On the one hand, I really am glad they still make PS2 games (as opposed to XBox games), but on the other hand, do they really expect me to pay that much for PS2 games when the PS2 is on the verge of obsolete? I keep imagining the breaking point when the PS3 has momentum and all the remaining PS2 games in stock drop to $10 - $20. But maybe that point will never come. Maybe I will never get to play GoW2
Try downloadable games (Score:3, Informative)
Consider this, I would LOVE to be able to buy a console that had games priced between $15 to $20. I don't really give a squat about the graphics, I want to be entertained. You'll have a customer for life if you make that happen, as I'll be able to justify buying a game or two a week.
Have you considered downloadable games? I purchased a PS3 this summer because of the PS3 games, and was surprised about the downloadable games you can purchase at low cost from the PlayStation Network store. My fave right now is Super Rub-a-Dub [youtube.com] - I'm 35, but I love this game. But I tell people I got it for my wife. :-)
Seriously, we will sometimes play this game for a few hours at a time. Lots of fun! Most fun you can have for only $7.
They have a ton of other games on PSN that are about the same cost.
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Games aren't that expensive (Score:2)
Three models of less expensive games (Score:4, Interesting)
Pro: Better revenue stream for game producers. Bug fixes easier to release.
Con: Consumers feel, rightfully, that they're getting ripped off.
2. Release games with in-game ads and product placements - signs in game and t-shirt logos and decals and maybe songs and optional extras are from adversiers.
Pro: Better revenue stream for game producers. Targeted ads from game registration.
Con: Consumers may feel they are oversold.
Note: If done only to level of real world or fantasy world normal experience, without flashing vids and noisy ads, this has higher buy in from consumers and doesn't feel bad to them.
3. Release games at lower cost and take money from CEO/exec pay while not stiffing game developers.
Pro: Investors in game producing firm get same return. Developers feel not as ripped off. Games cheaper.
Con: Fantasy. Game execs will never do this and will fix things so this never happens. Better off shooting the execs dead to practice marksmanship skills for in-game experience.
Re:Three models of less expensive games (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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So he's saying games should be immune to inflation (Score:5, Interesting)
If games cost $60-$70 for the SNES, if video games were subject to inflation, and given a modest 3% inflation rate, they would be costing between $93.48 and $109.06. Yes, I know that not all games cost $60-70 back fifteen years ago, but some very popular ones did.
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Move to the EU.
Here in Ireland, the average video game for a next generation system is 70. That's $101, almost twice the price of the average game in the US. The way I see it, instead of these executives worrying about getting Americans to spend $49 or $39 on games, why not figure out some way to get prices and release dates in the EU to less ridiculous levels? Higher taxation is a factor, true, but the average EU citizen has less spending power than the average US citizen,
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For some reason Slashdot didn't like the Euro sign and omitted it...
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Re:So he's saying games should be immune to inflat (Score:2)
Re:So he's saying games should be immune to inflat (Score:2)
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If you do the math, those peripherals actually cost less than a new controller. For example, I recently purchased Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360 for $90 (+ tax). I
Re:So he's saying games should be immune to inflat (Score:2)
A SNES era cartridge was created with custom made ROM chips that held the game, not unlike ancient arcade cabinets. The more you put on the game, the more chips you needed, and the more expensive it got. It was easy to notice by just weight! Some games also carried extra processors in them, wh
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Yes, SNES and N64 carts cost more to manufacture than Disc based games do. It wasn't just this though- nintendo had some pretty draconian royalty policies in place as well. New games could and did cost up to $30 more than comparable PS1 games back in the day, and you can't tell me that was all just the cost of the cart itself.
But that's besides the point. What the OP was trying to point out is that since the advent of disc based games (say, 1995 or so) the cost of a AAA game has only risen 20%, from about
Business model (Score:5, Funny)
1) Look at the development costs and segment by skills required.
2) Identify those skill that can be done elsewhere for less (art, coding for example)
3) Offshore those jobs
4) Pay CEO big bonus for saving money
5) Decide to ride the gravy train as long as you can with expensive games
6) Bail out of the company stock when it become obvious you are going to start losing money
7) CEO gets new job at another company for more money
8) Consultant pockets hefty fees
on the contrary... (Score:2)
With the caveat on that, that it has to be a decent game.
Even a decent game with flaws - for example, Neverwinter Nights 2. Is it perfect? No. However it has kept me occupied for probably 100+ hours so far. I think it was about $90 australian (tangent: now the $AU is up >90c US, why the hell are we paying so much?? :D), and if you work out the entertainment cost, it's near enough to $1/hr or less.
Game price point nearly constant? (Score:2)
If you ask me, this is a lame attempt to appeal to the "casual" gamer that's cropping up and changing the face of the video game industry. Perhaps these casual gamers, if driven by price alone, are the people who're buying all those DS-e
Games should be free ... (Score:2, Funny)
Here's something... (Score:2)
Good Idea + Throw a little bit of $$$$ at it = MORE PROFIT!
Get it? Start with a good idea for a game, for a change. That way, you don't have to sink $50M into lighting effects and marketing, just to get people to play it.
Tetris is one of the best selling games of all time, Lumines did extremely well too. You don't have to throw millions at something just for it to be good. Obviously for more epic gameplay, you need more time and money, but even then, do you think
With that in mind.... (Score:2)
($50? whatever happened to the $30 game? Blah!)
Obviously, it's a trap (Score:2)
Ha ha!
This is a trap. He's up to something.
I believe the current pricing for games is accurate... you can compare it with movies, I think it's a very just analogy when you pick out the differences. The cost to develop some games is about the same as for some movies. Give or take, I've been told that before so of course correct me if I'm wrong. The sale price for a game is much higher than the ticket price for a movie, or
Free? (Score:3, Funny)
I believe they also follow that model in Sweden [thepiratebay.org]
Re:Not all games worth the same price. (Score:4, Insightful)
At ~$80 for the whole package, I've had *years* of fun playing in co-op mode with my friends, every encounter was fresh, the quests were challenging and unexpected, and the monster AI dynamically adapted to my tactics.
Of course, there's the significant lag time of looking up the rules
Parent
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Or, if you don't believe me, check out this page [gamesforwindows.com].
According to MS, the free subscription gives you a Gamertag, Profile, Gamerscore (single player achievements only), Text and Voice chat, Friends List, and PC
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"In China, they're giving games away for free,' he says."
Considering the appalling slave-labor work conditions in China that likely contribute to a viable give-away-free business model, and that Mr. Riccitiello works for EA, a game company notorious for wor