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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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 Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 6:27 pm Post subject: Cheaper 360 (and PS3) first party releases - no more? |
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Did I miss some memo? Seems like first party software isn't getting any discount any more. Sony's PS3 offerings were at $59.99 just like the third party stuff (while on PS2 they typically sold first party games for $39.99 instead of the $49.99 standard).
Microsoft seems to be abandoning the lower first party price point too. First Gears of War, now Crackdown. And Forza 2's pre-release info page at Gamestop.com says $59.99 as well. A change from MS's earlier 360 releases - Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo, PGR3, N3, and Viva Pinata were all $49.99.
It doesn't look like just a Gamestop thing a la selling most of their DS titles for $5 more than MSRP. Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, Game Crazy - same thing from what I can tell.
I don't know if there's much productive discussion to be had about this, but I felt that expressing disappointment would be appropriate. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:42 pm |
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| Waffen wrote: |
yeah it depends on the game.
doesn't even have to be first party to be cheap sometimes.
Bomberman was $40, Table Tennis is $20 now and N3 was $40.
just depends on the supply/demand I think.
they would have been dumb to have sold Gears for $50. |
You're right that they can get what they ask for when we talk about the biggest releases. In fact, the reason I didn't notice when Gears came out is simply because the game was such a big title - I sort of expected them to get more money for their big holiday title. Crackdown? Not so much. I mean, yeah they're putting marketing dollars behind it (this is MS though, they tend to throw marketing dollars at most of their stuff) - but now it's becoming a trend with Gears, Crackdown, and Forza 2. Those are the first three $59.99 MSRP Microsoft first party games. The reason I even noticed is that I was considering picking Crackdown up after enjoying the demo. At $50 I'd probably do it. $60? I might have to think about it a little more.
As for suppy/demand... Would MS be dumb to try to sell Halo 3 for $75? They could no doubt do it and still sell tons of copies. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Nintendo sure could have sold Zelda for Wii for $60, or charge $60 for Mario Galaxy. People will still line up to buy in mass quantities. It's sort of frightening to consider though. I'm really not anxious for Kutaragi's $100 a piece game world to come into being.
Oh, and speaking of Sony - of course Sony is more than happy to oblige and price its first party stuff at $60 too. It's not just Microsoft. And Sony did indeed just adopt the lower first party game price strategy after the PS2 generation started, as Leau mentioned. It wasn't in place during the PSX and early PS2 days. Seems like they're done with that fun little experiment now though.
And yes, third party stuff can still get "budget" prices or different MSRPs. Test Drive Unlimited was probably my favorite 360 release of 2006, and part of my good will toward that game comes from its $39.99 price tag even though it's clearly a full featured game and doesn't feel "budget" like some of the cut rate games are. But that's sort of beside the point here, I'm more interested in the first party pricing scheme changing from what we've had in the recent past with Sony of the past several years, followed by MS during the first year of the 360.
It seems to me like MS was trying to ease into the next generation and that the transition period is coming to an end. Sort of like promising lots of backwards compatibility updates then losing interest. I'm not saying it isn't a good strategy - calm the angry people then slowly introduce change to make them used to it. It's still not very good for the people who buy games though.
Maybe Fuzion Frenzy and Viva Pinata were the last remnants of the old pricing system? Maybe they're judged to be worth less? And if so, is that really a good message to send that your first party games that are "good" cost $60, but the stuff that people don't want to buy we might price at $50? Hmmm...
Also, I wonder if maybe Gears's strong sales helped encourage this change, making MS think that a $60 price point is viable. And I wonder if they might be looking really carefully at Crackdown/Forza sales to see if GoW was an anomaly. If Crackdown doesn't sell that well, maybe they'll reconsider. Just something to think about. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:25 am |
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| GcDiaz wrote: |
| firenze wrote: |
At $50 I'd probably do it. $60? I might have to think about it a little more.
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You realize that those $10 would probably be spent on alcohol or candy or fast food anyway, right? Unless it's going right into a savings account, you're just depriving yourself. And if you can't afford to spend $60, then what are you doing spending $50 on a videogame?
And forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought $60 for new 360 games was the rule, not the exception. GoW has always been $60, or $70 for the collector's edition. I know I saw PDZ and PGR3 going for $60 in the circulars upon release. |
Whether I can really afford an extra $10 is not the point. It's a psychological barrier. It's the whole reason anything is $19.99 instead of $20.00. If a game that I'm on the fence about (like Crackdown) is $10 less than the average game on the system, that might push me over the edge. It's not a huge big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it IS significant. Especially if the price creeps upward again later. Maybe we have this same discussion in a couple years but the numbers are $70 for a standard release compared to $60 in January 2007.
I think it's rather short sighted to say $10 difference is meaningless. If you buy a large number of games in any given year, it adds up! In 2006 I probably bought 20+ games for 360 and PS3 at $59.99. If prices had never gone up from $49.99 that's a couple hundred bucks. That means something. When the 360 game prices for 3rd parties were announced as being $10 more than the standard previous generation, people complained and wondered if this experiment would fail, causing the game prices to go back down to a $49.99 standard. I guess we can see that wasn't the case. I wonder if Nintendo might start following the new pricing example from 360/PS3. It's not like they couldn't sell Mario Galaxy for $60...
And no, $60 for first party 360 games (those published by Microsoft) is indeed a new trend. The launch titles - PDZ, PGR3, and Kameo were all MSRP $49.99. So were other year 1 games - Ninety-nine Nights and Viva Pinata were also $49.99. If you saw a higher price, the store was trying to charge a higher than MSRP price (much as Gamestop charges $34.99 for most $29.99 MSRP DS games). Either that or you misread something or don't remember it correctly.
Gears was MS's first foray into $59.99 pricing for a title they published. No, it wasn't too unusual to many people because 3rd party games were often $59.99 since the system launched. So many people probably didn't even recognize the change. It's a big deal when the publisher that also makes the system has a change in their software pricing practices though, so I think it's worthy of discussion. |
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