The price of games

The developers of Call of Duty have just announced the latest release has already made $1 Billion in sale.

This is an impressive sounding figure. But the game has been released cross platform on PC, PS4/5 and Xbox S/X. So they are fulling in first day same from 3 platforms.

And the price of games has increased a lot. COD:MWII is £70, with the vault edition being £100. And the more dedicated COD games will all being buying thy most expensive version.

If you only took the £70 version the $1 Billion in sales would equal to 12.5 million sales. At £100 it would be 8.7 million. So as a rough average lets say 10 million sales.

That sounds impressive for a first week release figure. But spread over 3 platforms, let's say about 3.5 million sales per platform is now more of an avwrage first week sales figure for a AAA high profile release.

Anyway, my point is, are games now too expensive? Do you ever buy games at these prices? Or are you normally happy to wait for them to drop in price or appear in sales?

I have preordered a few games at quite high prices, but it's rare. Gran Turismo 7 is the only PS5 games I've preordered and paid full price for to date. And that was because if been waiting so many years for a new version.

Other than that I'm happy to wait for sales or for them to appear in the PS Plus library.

And it's very rare O ever but a game full price on PC. Most higher profile games appear within 6 months to a year on Humble Bundle, or heavily discounted on Steam.

PC games to a larger extent have avoided the big price increases compared to consoles. Maybe because the hardware manufacturers claw back loses on the hardware from software sales? Only a few PC games are released at the same prices, such as EA games.

It is great that we are still seeing quite a few lower profile games launched at far lower prices through. Many even £15. Including remakes or remastered from companies such as Square. That can help a lot with their sales as many will take a chance at those prices.

Final thought. We do have it good in gaming really. Compare any other market and compare the prices of items from 1990 with today and inflaction over that time has seen big changes in price. Gaming, music and films really haven't gone up with inflation veey much at all. We were paying £25 for a new PC or Amiga games in 1997, and £45-50 for a new console release even on the SNES. So games haven't really increased in price until very recently by much at all.

But £70 still seems a lot.

I'm happy to wait for things to become cheaper - I generally don't need to be in on day 1 unless it's something I am super duper keen on AND is also reasonably priced AND ALSO I have the time to get stuck in.

There's something about the $100 threshold which makes it feel, psychologically, really expensive (too expensive). When I paid around 90 bucks for Halo Reach, way back, it felt really hard to justify and I felt a little guilty for doing it. And yet, while it feels like a lot as a one time cost, when you calculate the $cost per hour of entertainment games stack up really well in comparison to other forms of entertainment, renting, or even going on a trip to the movies.

As well as these 'big hitters' like your CODs or FIFAs, it's interesting that there are some evergreen games that just keep ticking over and over - like Mario Kart 8. What a golden goose that must be.

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Originally Posted by J T

And yet, while it feels like a lot as a one time cost, when you calculate the $cost per hour of entertainment games stack up really well in comparison to other forms of entertainment, renting, or even going on a trip to the movies.

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That is indeed true, playing f.ex. an Assassin's Creed game for over 100 hours is totally worth the money.

I don't spend so much anymore, trying to play most of the games on PC nowadays, and there's really only one fraction of games I buy, rest is downloaded.

Sometimes I bought games on day 1 and ended up playing them 1 year later only. A lot of games are also better once fully patched or with complete DLCs for less cost. I still didn't even start Cyberpunk, but it's still updated quite regularly, day 1 was a mess.

And I play indeed a lot of sports games, recently bought the new FIFA and NHL 23, and they're worth their price considering how many hours you spend with.

Also if I go once to a restaurant here with my girlfriend it's even more than the price of 1 game, and I'm not even talking about Michelin star restaurants, for that you can buy a PS5 easily.

Very true. A good game is easy the best value entertainment in terms of hours provided. Even a game only lasting 20 hours.

I think the problem now is that for music, film and series we are no longer buying copies of them, Just streaming the lot for a fixed monthly cost. So games actually seem even more expensive as a standalone product That's where Gamepass and PS Plus Extra feel like great value.

But you can never beat actually owning a copy of something. And for certain games a physical copy with the cover art. Not That's something the youth of today are really missing out on with music.

I still have 1.800 music CDs standing on shelves here although I never use them. Have to tear everything down at some point, box them, and buy some actual nice furniture as replacement :lol: Looked amazing when I was living alone and people came to visit, but nowadays it looks like I'm still 20. Not to talk about the DVDs and BluRays, self built shelf takes one 3rd of the room from top to bottom.

Owning physical copies of games I don't care anymore at all.

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Even a game only lasting 20 hours.

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20 hours is pretty good for me (as long as they are good hours), I'm not after a massive time sink or commitment personally; although there have been a small number of really compelling games that I got really drawn into, for example Breath of the Wild and Metal Gear Solid 5. I really really got hooked on MGS5

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Looked amazing when I was living alone and people came to visit, but nowadays it looks like I'm still 20. Not to talk about the DVDs and BluRays, self built shelf takes one 3rd of the room from top to bottom.

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So true though, a big collection looked amazing back then when we were young.... and will probably be amazing again in another 20 years time. But the question is, can you hang on to it for that long?

A friend of mine had an incredible DVD collection, he was always buying them until one day, he just stopped. Now he has a load in his loft, doing nothing, and is trying to get rid of them. Funny how life changes.

Yeah, and I have to say that I didn't even buy any CDs for over 10 years now, otherwise the collection would be even more ridiculous.

Same here. I built a huge shelving unit many years ago to hold my CD and DVD collection. Not as big as DCs but it was over 300 CDs and over 700 DVDs. I still have them all, but most are actually stored at my parents house at the moment.

When younger it felt impressive to amass a big collection. Not so much these days. Looks a bit cluttered with loads on shelves. The preferred look is far more minimalist now. Even my gaming collection is hidden behibd doorwd cupboards these days, but in display other then a few select games.

I wouldn't want to part with a lot of the CDs/DVDs though. But there are quite a few films in there I really don't care much to need to own any more but for many you just can't get any money for them. But some such as Steel box copies of films like T2 or complete Monty Python collection won't be going anywhere. And with films I'd actually not as straight forward as music. With Spotify you can guarantee nearly anything you can think of will be there. It's not the same for streaming services and films or series. It can be hard to find which service a film is even streaming on, and it's becoming common for a service with a film to suddenly remove it. So with no physical copies you can be screwed sometimes asx many films are still not actually available.