Now I understand why many indies go to consoles...

[Jack Norton]

...because they can milk the consumers :)
Seriously. I was comparing princes of PES 2008 on www.play.com, since is about to be released and like all years I'll buy it for PC:
PC 27.99 EUR
XBOX and PS3 61.99 EUR

now, WTF ? the game is the same on all the platforms, how comes that costs twice on the consoles? wasn't the PC market in crisis because of piracy? :confused:
Didn't they all say that piracy makes prices of games higher?

Bah... if I was a console user would be quite pissed!

[cliffski]

wow. 62 euros for the new version of a football game right?
insane.

[Adrian Cummings]

I think they do it... because they can.

[Jack Norton]

Now that I think about it, even 4 years ago when I had the PS2 (which I bought only to play PES) I paid around 59-69 eur for that game, so the price was always so high.
Luckily now I can play it on the pc :)

BTW for that game IMHO the price would be even worth it. It's the only game I still play after 1 year I bought it... can't say the same for 99% of other games I own. Still the difference in price is weird!

[Adrian Cummings]

They would no doubt state many reasons for the hike in price like many publishers before them - most outcomes of which were 'invented' around a marketing board room table perhaps over coffee/tea and donuts - that's how most things get decided in this world from what I've seen down the years :)

[Desktop Gaming]

Console games have always been a rip-off. Even Atari 2600 games were over £20, and that was three decades ago. Yet the likes of Mastertronic could push out a cassette-based game for 1/10th of that price.

I think the difference is, back then, instant-loading games and the "no technical knowledge required' approach were new and innovative, so they could kind of justify the price tag that way. Cartridges weren't actually that expensive to produce.

Nowadays I think the high price for console games has sort of just 'stuck' since the old days, much the same as why casual games are almost always $19.95.

Companies that churn out sequel after sequel (PES, JMF, FIFA et al) even reuse the same engine so they don't even have that expense. Update the teams and players, that'll be another €70, thanks! :rolleyes:

They get away with it, because the customers let them.

[Jack Norton]

Companies that churn out sequel after sequel (PES, JMF, FIFA et al) even reuse the same engine so they don't even have that expense. Update the teams and players, that'll be another €70, thanks! :rolleyes:


this maybe can be true for FIFA, but no way for PES. Every year the game may look similar at first glance (well, it's soccer after all) but once you start to play it seriously you notice the huge difference.
I was able to find all the new things in the game in about 6months of playing it... :cool:

[tagged]

Hmm, I was just under the impression some games were never really intended for PC, or the publisher/developer felt it didn't suit PC as much as consoles so they just released them in a budget title to earn a little extra? The ports are usually sloppy as well, showing press X or START button etc....

Happened to that Marvel Heroes action/rpg game last year, sold full price on consoles but $20 (AU) on PC.

[Sol_HSA]

On one side, console manufacturers fund their operations from games, selling hardware "cheap".

On the other, after making conscious decision to invest in a game console, consumers are more likely to spend some more on the games so that the money spent on the console isn't "wasted".

Me, I just bought second-hand wind waker and have been playing it on my wii, and I have to say that it wasn't the worst 20 euros I've spent on entertainment. =)

[Gary Preston]

Makes me wonder how much revenue games companies lose out on due to people thinking prices are too high and instead waiting a month or two for the £40-60 games to appear traded in for £20, from which the company would receive 0%.

Perhaps the high console game prices explains the pretty thriving trade in market.

Until a game can be snagged for under £30, I'll usually wait.

[barrygamer]

About a month ago I bought PES6 (for PS2) -- 10 quid. Its 10 quid on Play.com and Game.net. Pretty damn good really! The developers have made their job very hard to attract people to the new version every year. Moreover, the next-gen versions should really look better than they do...

One problem with the PC version is that people try the demo and find its almost unplayable without a gamepad. I do wonder why they port to PC, they must have reasonable PC sales I suppose.

I'm holding out on 360/PS3 for now, though 360 has some good games now.

IMO they should combine their PES Management game into the normal PES, to make the master league feature fully fleshed-out. At least it would be a big new feature.

[tagged]

Makes me wonder how much revenue games companies lose out on due to people thinking prices are too high and instead waiting a month or two for the £40-60 games to appear traded in for £20, from which the company would receive 0%.

Well Sony knew all about this, the whole debate over the ps3 planing to have games locked to the first console that ran it. Unless that was pure rumors etc... It was along time ago, maybe my memories playing up.

[Sol_HSA]

Well Sony knew all about this, the whole debate over the ps3 planing to have games locked to the first console that ran it. Unless that was pure rumors etc... It was along time ago, maybe my memories playing up.
Welll.. you can't move your downloaded contents (xbla, wiiware, and whatever sony's doing) from one console to another, can you? =)

[Jack Norton]

One problem with the PC version is that people try the demo and find its almost unplayable without a gamepad. I do wonder why they port to PC, they must have reasonable PC sales I suppose.
I think they use an engine called Renderware, so they develop it on PC also, so the port must be trivial (from XBOX version), so why not?
BTW for Pc You can buy a PS2 gamepad USB adaptor that works great - I was able to do the transition from PES on PS2 to Pc quite painlessly :cool:

[barrygamer]

I think they use an engine called Renderware, so they develop it on PC also, so the port must be trivial (from XBOX version), so why not?


Yes, I suppose so. But, I feel bad for people who try to play it on keyboard and get put off the game... unless they added some cool mouse/kb combo controls.

Didn't realise it was renderware, I thought that was no longer used (since EA bought it out?). Anyway, it gave us Burnout and GTA too, gotta be thankful for that!

I am currently playing as Chelsea, Ballack scoring like crazy (the default master league players were soooo baaad I got bored of them for now).

[sillytuna]

I need to add a few points here:

Developers do not set the prices, publishers do.

Console platform holders have a very large say in price points, and their charges are a significant proportion of the price. This is where they make their money (ordinarily, before anyone sees Wii).

Retailers generally don't make much money off new releases, they make their money from second hand games.

Per unit revenue for the developer on console can still be very small. On a mid-price point title it could be a euro or less per unit. On a larger title it also isn't usually a significant figure. More importantly, royalties are quite rare in the industry these days due to recoupment of development fees.

Having seen full break downs on RRPs (for contractual reasons), I can tell you that it's not so easy to reduce prices, and for anyone but the very largest publishers it's a constant struggle.

Consoles + retail are not gold at the end of the rainbow. However, consoles + digital distribution, that's much more interesting.

Edit: For the economists out there, I wonder what the price elasticity curve is on PC vs PS2 vs XBox 360.

[Polycount Productions]

...because they can milk the consumers :)
Seriously. I was comparing princes of PES 2008 on www.play.com, since is about to be released and like all years I'll buy it for PC:
PC 27.99 EUR
XBOX and PS3 61.99 EUR

now, WTF ? the game is the same on all the platforms, how comes that costs twice on the consoles? wasn't the PC market in crisis because of piracy? :confused:
Didn't they all say that piracy makes prices of games higher?

Bah... if I was a console user would be quite pissed!

Hmm... do you mean it's bad if indies can milk consumers? :)

[Ratboy]

Hmm... do you mean it's bad if indies can milk consumers? :)
Well yeah. It's just like show business. The moment you start making money, you're a sellout. ;)

[Jack Norton]

Heh actually is true, on console there are no indie devs that sets prices, but the publishers do.

Anyway I don't think that if I was selling my games for pc at 19.95 and for mac at 39.95 I wouldn't get any complaint ;)

[KNau]

I justify paying for console games by reminding myself that I'm buying fewer bugs. I honestly can't remember the last time I bought a so-called AAA title for the PC that wasn't absolutely riddled with them.

[princec]

Strangely enough I've never played a game on the PC that had bugs (that I found). Mind you I don't buy that many games. 1 a year or something.

<edit> Except Soldat of course which has more amusing bugs than you can shake an MP5 at :)

Cas :)

[Fry Crayola]

One thing about consoles is that although the games are typically more expensive than any PC versions, the machine itself is generally cheaper. From scratch, a good PC + monitor set up may be around £800, whereas a console retails around the £299 mark at release. If a PC game is £25 and the console iteration £40, then you'd need to buy 33 full price console games before it works out cheaper to go down the PC route. We could add the television as a console cost, but I think it's fair to say people own TVs as a matter of course. People don't own monitors as standard without a PC to hook it up to.

Of course, you only need to buy a PC once and then upgrade, whereas consoles involve a five-yearly re-buy schedule. That said, I'd imagine that upgrading a PC over a five year period is going to work out a least as expensive as a new generation console.

Console gaming is really the cheaper alternative. The costs are spread differently.

[princec]

Except... except... it seems that you can actually get a nice laptop for £300 nowadays. That comes with its own keyboard and monitor and stuff.

Cas :)

[Fry Crayola]

Except... except... it seems that you can actually get a nice laptop for £300 nowadays. That comes with its own keyboard and monitor and stuff.

Cas :)

I would be genuinely surprised if it ran Crysis.

[cliffski]

I don't always upgrade the monitor with a new PC, plus a lot of people would need 2 TVs, unless noboidy else in the house wants to use the TV when you fancy a game.
And keyboard and mouse kicks gamepads ass for an FPS :D

[princec]

Why would it need to run Crysis though?

Cas :)

[Fry Crayola]

Why would it need to run Crysis though?

Cas :)

If it can't run the latest games, it's rather irrelevant, don't you think? If you're just going to play older and budget releases on it, then the console equivalents are things like Xbox Live Arcade or the Virtual Console, and playing old games you pick up for a fiver in the bargain bins.

Talking about full price RRPs mean you talk about the games that carry them.

[Fry Crayola]

I don't always upgrade the monitor with a new PC

I was talking about the first PC you ever buy, not the subsequent purchases. It's practically a given that someone has a TV they can play a console on, but who has a monitor lying around without a PC to go with it?

As for the pad/mouse, that's a never ending debate about comfort and game styles.

[princec]

There's other kinds of games besides Crysis that you can't play on consoles (yet) - WoW would run just fine on a £300 laptop I suspect. Even HL2 would probably run OK. I've seen £300 laptops with Nvidia and ATI parts in them after all.

Cas :)

[Fry Crayola]

There's other kinds of games besides Crysis that you can't play on consoles (yet) - WoW would run just fine on a £300 laptop I suspect. Even HL2 would probably run OK. I've seen £300 laptops with Nvidia and ATI parts in them after all.

Cas :)

Half Life 2 can be bought for a fiver second hand on a fifty quid Xbox (and plays marvellously, I might add), so is that not moot also?

Surely the barometer is brand new games, as that's what we've been talking about? WoW is already quite expensive anyhow as it has a recurring cost.

I still reckon I'd be quite surprised if a £300 laptop could run the most recent releases at an acceptable level. Pleasantly surprised, might I add!

[princec]

I'm seeing some good stuff running on these cheapass laptops... I think the turning point has come for laptops finally. Even the shitty ones are really good and they're now in that magic sub £300 electronic commodity bracket that means almost everyone will have something at least that good soon. Which is good for us :)

Cas :)

[Diragor]

I've seen £300 laptops with Nvidia and ATI parts in them after all.

Don't forget that ATI and NVidia make low-end garbage, too. I have a laptop that cost $800 a year ago and has an ATI Radeon Express 200M in it. Quake 4, also now a year old, is unplayable at the lowest resolution with all graphics options off/down). That was the first and last "AAA" game I tried on it when I was hoping to take it to a LAN party. Gaming laptops are still very expensive.

[princec]

Wow. Second worst benchmark (http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-Xpress-200M.2175.0.html)! Even beaten by one of Intel's risible efforts.

Cas :)

[ilya2]

Assuming you have a desktop and know how to assemble it(prices are in dollars so halve it if you use euros or something):

-You could reuse the: mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers/headphones, sound card, LAN/WAN cards, most other PCI cards, PSU, drives, cooling, all other external hardware, ect. They would still need to be upgraded but not on the same schedule, and they wouldn't make much of a difference in game proformance, except for maybe cooling.

-That leaves you with the: GPU, motherboard, CPU, and RAM. I'm assuming that you won't upgrade until you also need to upgrade your motherboard(3ish years, but I guess you could go for 5).

Here are the prices for bleeding-edge parts, from Newegg:
-Some generic good motherboard: $200
-Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX: $550
-Core 2 Quad Q6700: $540
-2Gb PC3 15000 RAM: $630 (or $1260 if 4g)
-Total: $1920 ($2550 for the 4g)

For pretty high-up parts in the same generation:
-The good motherboard: $150
-Geforce 8800 GTS: $390
-Core 2 Quad Q6600: $280
-2Gb PC2 8500 RAM: $140 ($280 for 4g)
-Total: $960 (or $1100)

Bioshock recommended requirements(with some extra power):
-The motherboard, alright: $100
-Geforce 8600GT 256mb: $130
-2gb RAM, PC2 6400: $61
-Core 2 E4500 Allendale: $145
-Total: $436 (307 Euros according to Google)

And remember that you can sell your old parts for $100 at least.
I'm assuming most people already have a PC, and the monitor... If not, a CRT monitor is cheaper and has better quality than a LCD(but it's big and hurts your eyes), or they could plug thier PC into a TV. It would look bad, but they could do it.

[vjvj]

Don't forget guys that the license fees publishers pay for console games are pretty damn high. IIRC, on PS1 they were $5 PER DISC MANUFACTURED (regardless of sales). I wouldn't be surprised if current gen consoles are higher.

I'm sure the big studios get breaks on it, but even then it doesn't make any sense for them to not milk the incentive for the extra profit.