I Tend To Agree
August 10th, 2008With Tycho, that is, in that the real question with any game should be whether it’s worth the asking price, not what that price is per se. Indie games suffer from the inherent and unfair presumption that they’re inferior to AAA releases, and so need to be overly careful about gamer expectations regarding their price point.
That said, it’s probably worth considering the practical pricing issue at stake here: people have a limited amount of money to spend on games of any type, and well-publicized titles, whose quality is usually fairly apparent upon release, have already reserved a spot in their budgets. As a result, new, less well-known games need to slot themselves into that existing budget, and an extra $5 may very well make the difference between “impulse purchase” and no purchase at all.
In short, pricing shouldn’t matter - but it does. And getting angry at gamers who implicitly recognize this fact is probably counterproductive; not everyone has the same ability to pay, even if they express their problem poorly. Hopefully quality will win out in the end.
(By the way, who’s bought Braid? Is it everything it’s cracked up to be? I’m probably going to pick it up upon my return to the States.)
Posted in Business, Geoff, Xbox Live |
August 10th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Geoff-
Yes, it is worth it. It is relatively short, but so was Portal (and this is longer than Portal)… and this ranks up there with Portal, imo, as one of the most clever and interesting games in the last few years. Megan happened to overlook me playing the end and commented “This is the coolest game I have ever seen.”
Despite it being worth $15, though, I also think (as basically mentioned in my last post) that it would’ve sold a lot better at $10. According to VGChartz, the game is doing just fine with 28.5k sold so far, but I remain skeptical of whether it can hit the 100k mark (something Penny Arcade, which is $5 more, has barely made it halfway to), and if it does, it may just barely make it. This is sad for a couple reasons: first, it’s quite possible the $10 price would’ve netted even more revenue for the game, and second, it means the number of people who play it is fairly limited.
August 10th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
It’s always difficult to judge pricing decisions, especially after the fact. Basically, the question is whether or not it could have sold an extra 15,000 copies at $10 - and I’m guessing it probably could have.
More disturbingly, the 360 has an install base of nearly 20M units… and only 0.15% of those console owners bought the game? That’s pretty rough… hopefully the game picks up some speed.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
I bought Braid and i think it’s excellent. I’d recommend it.