Why Games Cost $60 536
eldavojohn writes "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price — but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99, as did the makers of Batman Arkham Asylum? After all, those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop, and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience.'"
Re:...only in America (Score:5, Funny)
That's to cover the costs of editing out textures and censoring.
Because they can (Score:5, Funny)
It's the same underlying reason why male dogs lick their balls.
Re:Which is why (Score:5, Funny)
I like Steam because I feel too ridiculous buying a game in a Best Buy in my late 30s :-) Really, Steam is like a brown paper wrapper for Half-Life and Crysis :-)
Damn, dude, I'm 57 but I'll get off your lawn anyway.
Re:Which is why (Score:3, Funny)
Don't have gamer shame!
Re:Its justified price (Score:5, Funny)
and I've spent pointless hours on it.
Learning how to survive with 3 other people against a horde of zombies is NOT pointless.
Re:I used to make this same exuse... (Score:4, Funny)
It's where you have to go to collect 36 Murloc Eyeballs. Duh.
Re:Its justified price (Score:1, Funny)
Because you peckers will buy them at that price.