Xboxist

Eh... I don't really have a problem with games varying in prices depending on the value of them... but the problem is... you get games that are mediocre or even crap and they still charge the standard $60 price. So for every "super value" $60 game you buy that maybe should've cost $90... there's plenty of "crap value" titles where you are paying $60 when it should've been $30.

When companies start being honest about the true value, then I won't get up in arms at price increases. But until then... where's my pitchfork and torch?!

Also... the $60 price point came with the new hardware. You can argue that the first games were still last-gen... but it was basically a $10 increase per game for next-gen systems.

No. Just, No.

I do agree with not ahving a fixed price for games, but that should go in the other direction as well. PSN/XBL games r cheap, yes because development was cheaper, and yes because u dont have physical materials, but i still ahve to buy a hdd big enough to contain all the games i dl. i cant just go to a store and buy a game, not having a system, and just play it. the hdd is becoming a system in its own with DL games. I was happy to see when the Sonic's Collection came out, it was cheaper than a usual game. If the rope swings in both direction, i got no prob. But seeing as that we're talkn about ActiBliz here, i think they want more money cause the game is widely popular, and they kno this.

The publisher sets the price for games and the developer receives a small percentage. Your whole article is baseless since it is in fact the greed of the publisher that is driving the prices ever higher and not the developer. Look at games like Fallout 3 or the upcoming Borderlands and examples of what can be achieved regarding value at a given price point.

Anyone saying higher prices are good for the consumer is either outright stupid or has their head in the clouds.

This isn't a good thing. You must have forgotten that the United States is in a depression, which is affecting most of the world--and hiking prices, while giving them more capital to refill the ink on their money machine isn't going to improve the quality of their game. They're not going to have a Co-Op Campaign for up to 4 players on one single console. Its unlikely there will be a Zombie Mode comeback in MW2. And people definitely have a budget this year. If Activision and Infinity Ward raise the bar on the price mid-session, other companies, especially greedy ones like Microsoft and Bungie, normal game companies like Bethseda who make games and about twelve hundred add-ons to continue to play the game, and really new devs that make un-enjoyably crappy games that everyone wants to purchase because it looks so cool but when you see the loading screen all is lost (Haze) you know that you've been jipped.
I'm an artist. I know it takes a lot of time (1-2 years) to make an 8-hour game with a fun and repeatable story as well as a fun and repetitive multi-player. But devs get a decent amount of money for making the games. Increasing the amount of money we're giving them by 50% isn't going to raise quality, just the standards at which games are to be priced. They know that no matter what people are going to buy this game, whether they make it $200 USD or $500 USD. Hell, Infinity Ward's evil twin brother Treyarch made billions off of a storyline with new skins and 2 new modes of play. People love the CoD franchise. But it's going to decrease sales of all the other games if they go in at that high. They'll be making more per game, but most people are going to check on what they want to buy before they purchase something that will equal out (with tax here) to $100.
Its a bad idea. I hope I made a solid enough point.

They're nuts (and you're crazy to encourage them).

Personally I'll just wait until the game is discounted (and discounted far below the old 'norm' @ £45 too).
Besides, according to umteen sites on the net this is just them testing the waters to see if the market is readfy for a hike up from £45.

In this recession, my bet is they are dead wrong.

I like COD4, I did buy COD5 but I never have & I'm not now paying £45 nevermind £55 for a game.

So far I've yet to pay more than £22 for a new game.
I see no reason to break the habit.
I can wait.

Ok let me ask you this?
You state that the increased price is an indicator of added value.

If this is the case, then i don't expect to three more map packs on psn/XBL for 7.99 each. But ill believe that when i see it.

You do realize then that the full experience cost is now at 55 + (3x8) which is 80 quid!

Yea but who's to say they will not ship the same 60$ game for 90$ and still come out with DLC to try to squeeze even more money out of us. There is no regulation on them. Every developer thinks there game is gold even if it's crap.

The price increase is absolute nonsense, and everyone including Activision knows this. Anyone in the UK buying this game should import it from the US or another region where the price isnt inflated, to press the point. Believe me, they'll know why there's millions playing in Europe, but only a handful of sales.

maybe im mistaken but this generation didin the standard price go from 50 to 60??? this article makes it sound like we have been paying 60$ for games sence the NES days, and in this economy, raising the price is likely to just make the patient gamers wait for that price drop or even worse for the developer pick it up used at gamestop.

First Activision says PS3 is too expensive(im not saying it isnt) and now they make their game $90. Seriously? That is messed up.

Anyway i dont see this as a good thing for gaming. A lot less people will buy games at $90 including myself. I dont even buy alot of games as is so personally this would suck.

I feel bad for UK people, but hey you guys can always import though ;].

These companies are releasing games that have features HIDDEN, and then calling them DLC packs later on. You're now saying that those DLC packs add value. They don't, they are adding cost to things that are normally included in games that came out in the past. Those games may look inferior now, but in their day the cost was high too. The developers are trying to find more ways to make money because they are businesses that need to increase profits for their investors. They will lie all day long to get you to give them more money. Epic was trying something like this before where they wanted a cut of resale which when applied to any other market is unrealistic and idiotic. America is in a recession which affects the world market, these companies want more money to make up for it. The thing that they fail to see is that everyone is hurting for money right now, not just them.

Boycott this game, if you buy it at this price, what next? next gen games will cost $100??? and you r crazy for saying is good for the game business...what good it is? 90 for a game and a couple of $10 for DLC that is supposed to be free...F that!and you for joining them!!!

This whiny topic of development budgets and publishers' prices never was newsworthy until this gen, and it's making me sick. I just want to have fun playing good games.

The game-makers already manage publishers' demands, time constraints, technical constraints, etc. The retail price isn't that different. They try to make money by making the best value game they can in their time-frame.

The more expensive it is, fewer people can buy it.
...unless it's a plastic musical instrument that spreads airborne crack.

If that was true, why are ALL games the default price?

Surely they would have lower price points for games such as ICE AGE 3 and Harry Potter.

The only reason MW2 has gone up is they KNOW how well it will sell, and people will most likely pay the extra... If they up the price £5 x that buy the expected >10 million sales that's an extra 50 million, you going to tell me it cost more than £50 million to make MW2?

I
Dont
Think
So!

???????????
how is a game costing more money a good thing?
mayb for developers but not for us consumers.
last time i checked were in a recession millions of people have lost their jobs, we dont have a extra 10 bucks to spend on games.
seriously no joke per year i spend close to 4K on bloody games and accessories.
not to mention consoles.
and they want more?

What the f.. is this guy talking about, why is this price hiking better for gamers and the industry? maybe for their pockets, yeah but the industry?

1- More expensive means people will buy less, which means bad for the industry.

2- £45 already too expensive for some, and now 55£, is it really best for gamers to be a little more poor?

3- Quality of games will not change unless there are bigger blueray or dvd disc. plus remember they will not let dlc down they are making good money with it already.

4- Lets remember that is just a game like the others, there is nothing special with, after 5 to 10 hours of playing time the game is over.

calm down people this has too be a joke this guy could not be this STUPID !!!! too think it is good for them to charge more for these games. "look" people wait to buy them used now. when the price is 60.00, how many will wait to buy used if they cost 90.00 ok raise your hands
whose waiting me me!!!!

It is one thing for developers to initially charge less than the standard $60 because they don't expect much sales or feel that it has enough value. It is entirely different to raise the initial price of a game because the developers feel it has more value or will have great sales.
Only gamers can truly judge games. If a game is deemed to suck too much to be worth $60, then sales will be low and the price will drop. It follows, then, that a game's price can only raise if gamers are willing to pay more once they know how great it is (meaning the game has been on the market). While doing so wouldn't make much sense to anybody, it would be unfair for developers to assume their game will be greatly received and raise the price before the public has a chance to judge the game for themselves.
Publishers and developers earn their fanbases by making great games. A price cap is a way to keep them in check so they do not become greedy and exploit the loyalty of their fans. Since nobody can guarantee that a game will live up to its pre-release hype generated by advertising, publishers and developers should not be allowed to hike up the initial price of a self-proclaimed "supergame."
As for downloadable content, every gamemaker should learn from Valve and make all of their DLC free for everyone because they have already paid for the game. For multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2, Valve believes that content is essentially made by the other players. The way to make more money from a game is to add more content, and adding more content means making the game better with updates and DLC for everyone, both current and potential players. Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/valve-wont-charge-for-dlc

i will not pay $100 for some game which will probably not statisfy me for a year. i dont know about you all but with low money these days increasing prices is the last thing alot us need and to those people with money do put your head up ur ass and eat your own poop.

if this game releases for anything over the disired 24.99 its not getting any money from me .. speciall after playing MW1 that game only lasted me 50 mins..

How can you justify such an act of greed? The standard price for nearly all triple A PC games has been at $50 USD for over two decades, and it has stayed there even with all the advancements in technology that we have experienced. There is no basis for increasing the price of a game because it is "next-gen". If this example were to be used in the movie industry, for example, moves that cost more to produce would cost more to watch, but obviously, this is not the case. Take The Dark Knight, for example. It's production costs were massive, but did a movie ticket to go see it cost any more than any other movie? No, it remained the same.
And most people don't seem to understand the reason for the extra $10 that console games are sold at. This is just a royalty to the console developer, as they sell their consoles at a loss, and they make it up by adding that extra $10. This, I don't mind, but slapping that extra $10 onto the PC version of the game? That's just greed on activision's behalf.
So why do they do it? They've had several representatives try to spin it off in one way or another; we want to make our game better or we believe people will pay extra if they know it's quality. This is total and utter bulls**t. On top of that, they've removed dedicated servers from the PC version, effectively destroying any chances the game had in having a multiplayer component anywhere near as successful as the prequel. This also means there will not be a modding community, as all servers will be IW.net hosted and controlled. Basically, they're FORCING us to PAY MORE for DLC. As excited for this game as I was, I refuse to buy any product from such a greedy and manipulative company. Until the price goes down and they release some patch to allow for dedicated servers, Activision is not getting a cent from me.

people cana barely afford £40 - £45 for games the now let alone £55

people have to pay rent or morgage on thier house
,taxes,vet bills for pets.college,food etc generaly live 1 day to the next

droppin game prices to a reasonable £35 brand new while peowned prices will still vary regardless

£45 and growing? and they wonder why there so many modded consoles/copied games out there?

If piracy was already a big issue to developers , now it is about to turn into a nightmare!

I used to purchase pc games all the time. I would go to futureshop here in Canada and buy a 30 dollar game here and there and that is it. After just one year I had spent 1000 dollars on computer games and I still have them all to prove it.
Since realizing how stupid it was that these companies were making so much money they were constantly buying each other out and releasing terrible games at full price, I decided to start downloading most of them to try them out first... call me a pirate if you will but I will buy the game when it is worth it or delete it if it is crap, but after being tricked into buying dozens of cruddy games at full price, I said never again. Now they wonder why sales are lower than ever.... that is it. Same thing happened to music and videos at crappy places like HMV and they had to drop all their prices so that people would buy them again and still more and more people refuse because now we also know how little is being received by the artists. We are all sick of this... that is all it comes down to. Stop trying to be millionaires from a single game release and the fans might come back, until then.... go fuck yourselves