Do Video Games Cost Too Much?

Valve's Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year's Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which "resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title's original launch performance." They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount. This will undoubtedly add to the speculation that game prices have risen too high for the current economic climate. G4TV ran a live blog of Newell's presentation, providing a few more details.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

VALVe games are the only games I buy without even thinking it through.

So you have a crush on Alyx? Admit it!

Re:It's based on the game

[clickclickdrone]

>reminded me of counters strike
When tiddly winks goes bad...

Re:Yes

[TheP4st]

See, see, solid evidence that one download = one lost sale. If he had not been able to evaluate Spore he would have bought it. We got you now TPB.

Mwahahaha, The plaintiffs in the TPB trial

Re:Yes

[Cyanara]

Until some bastard reveals that Bruce Willis was dead all along.

Re:Yes they are...

[Hognoxious]

Considering that a $200 million "film" can be obtained in DVD for USD$20 at most, I am sure that there is no way a Wii game should cost more than that... (currently 50 euro!)

Considering that beer is 94% water, and water is free from the tap, there's no way a pint should cost three quid.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to take your own advice.

Re:Yes

[PotatoFarmer]

Really? Well shit, Armageddon makes so much more sense now.

Re:Yes they are...

[MightyYar]

I would never put squid in my beer.

Shrug

[SmallFurryCreature]

You don't pay for the beer, you pay for the fact that you think you stand any chance picking up any girls in that bar. Surely hope, no matter how misplaced is worth three quid?

Re:remarkably downloadable.

[Ihmhi]

Piracy on the whole

I believe the term for that is "butt piracy".

Re:Yes

[ConanG]

How do you know what movie he's talking about?

Re:Yes

[MightyYar]

A better question is, how is it on my Netflix queue when I don't have Netflix?

Re:Impulse power!

[trdrstv]

It does? You run through all the dungeons and kill the boss at the end. If you like, run it all over again as a different class. That's not my idea of tremendous replay value. Perhaps you are talking about Diablo II?

Maybe you're right. Maybe I am thinking of D2, since they did the "dungeon randomizer" and added online play.