EA Boss Says Games Too Expensive 139
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."
Is this thing on? Can you hear me... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Cheap games would be nice but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cheap games would be nice but... (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
No no no. A 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011, if you please.
Re:So he's saying games should be immune to inflat (Score:2, Interesting)
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). If you assume the game by itself would be the usual $60, that means the wireless Les Paul guitar controller is only $30. A wireless controller from Microsoft costs around $40. Similarly with Rock Band, the bundle price for guitar + drums + mic + game is going to be $170. If you take the $60 game out of the equation, you're left with $110 for three peripherals. IMHO the breakdown for that is most likely $20 mic, $30 guitar, and $60 drums (the drums are actually very high quality for a toy). Factoring out the drums, you're paying list price or less for the other components.
You're comparing apples to oranges. The SNES games that cost $60+ were that expensive because of the cartridge technology. They were using bigger memory chips (SF2, Finaly Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger). When consoles moved away from cartridges, games dropped in price significantly. Final Fantasy VII was only $50 (IIRC) even thought it was bigger than FF6, because the CD format was significantly cheaper to produce (also, some of the cost moved elsewhere, since you purchased separate memory cards rather than having on-cartridge writable memory+battery). That's not to say that games shouldn't adjust for inflation, but you can't use the SNES as a starting point because it was not disk-based.