Pc games are gettting expensive!

[EvilOzzmess]

ONE new title a year!? :shock: im probably on game 35+ this year

Yep. Tough job market out here, haven't been able to get anything other than a seasonal gig with UPS for five years (pays out to less than $1,000)... and they've cut those positions at my hub this Peak... so no money this year. Otherwise I'd be getting games left and right and have built myself a real rig already. Hopefully someday...

 

[badger906]

are you guys paid extra to drive at 90mph everywhere and tailgate everyone!?

here in the UK every ups driver drives like a nutter and sites like 2 meters from the car in front of it on the motor way lol

 

[EvilOzzmess]

are you guys paid extra to drive at 90mph everywhere and tailgate everyone!?

here in the UK every ups driver drives like a nutter and sites like 2 meters from the car in front of it on the motor way lol

LOL, wouldn't know. We're not allowed to even touch the steering wheel. We just do all of the hard work and heavy lifting, while the guy normally doing that and the driving for 3x the pay sits on his butt and stomps on the pedal, watching us flat-out run each of the 350-400 stops ourselves. Hardly worth the $8.50 for such brutal work, but it's all that was out here.

 

[Richardc269]

are you guys paid extra to drive at 90mph everywhere and tailgate everyone!?

here in the UK every ups driver drives like a nutter and sites like 2 meters from the car in front of it on the motor way lol

LOL, wouldn't know. We're not allowed to even touch the steering wheel. We just do all of the hard work and heavy lifting, while the guy normally doing that and the driving for 3x the pay sits on his butt and stomps on the pedal, watching us flat-out run each of the 350-400 stops ourselves. Hardly worth the $8.50 for such brutal work, but it's all that was out here.

I'm lucky if I even get 1 game a year. Seeing as I don't really have an income, I can't buy games.

 

[badger906]

im sure in a year i could find enough money on the floor to get at least one game! lol

 

[Richardc269]

im sure in a year i could find enough money on the floor to get at least one game! lol

You're luckier than I am, my friend. lol.

 

[biggles1000]

This is from a 1996 Best Buy flyer. (originally here). The RRP for MS Flight Simulator X Gold Edition seems to be $39.99, $5 less than 1996's Flight Simulator would have cost you
The launch prices of PC games seem to be the same, if not a bit lower than console ones, but, the PC version prices stay higher a lot longer. Just look at The Sims 2 prices. It'll still cost you around $15 to get a new copy for a seven year old game. The issue is, the publishers and the game shops really couldn't give a... *ahem*... about PC gamers anymore. The computer platform's openness (compared to the locked-down aspects of the PS3 or Xbox 360) puts them off, as does people allegedly whining about hardware requirements, and re-selling PC games is an issue which does not exist with console games due to activation.
But yes, it does seem that PC games are getting expensive :/

 

[Richardc269]

This is from a 1996 Best Buy flyer. (originally here). The RRP for MS Flight Simulator X Gold Edition seems to be $39.99, $5 less than 1996's Flight Simulator would have cost you
The launch prices of PC games seem to be the same, if not a bit lower than console ones, but, the PC version prices stay higher a lot longer. Just look at The Sims 2 prices. It'll still cost you around $15 to get a new copy for a seven year old game. The issue is, the publishers and the game shops really couldn't give a... *ahem*... about PC gamers anymore. The computer platform's openness (compared to the locked-down aspects of the PS3 or Xbox 360) puts them off, as does people allegedly whining about hardware requirements, and re-selling PC games is an issue which does not exist with console games due to activation.
But yes, it does seem that PC games are getting expensive :/

Diablo 2 actually still sells for $20 in most stores. I don't think it's even worth $20 anymore. Maybe $7-$10. It also has problems with Windows 7 (weird color issues, SC does this too) unless you get some "unofficial" fix for it. Blizzard pretty much refuses to try and fix this, saying that Diablo 2's pretty much too old. They don't want to deal with it, if you ask me.

 

[sinbin]

some interesting comments and views thanks!
But one point if games companies go digital.then people at the distrubution end/packing e.t.c. will lose work thus making people jobless!
There is no easy answer to the the problem!
Games for pc are getting worse as in ports from consoles /buggy e.t.c
BUT THE MOST STRANGE THING IS THERE GETTING MORE EXPENSIVE ,AND GETTING WORSE!
I i purchase atleast 20+ games a year and have a huge collection of games 400+.i will never pirate reason being i dont trust the torrent sites e.t.c.

 

[Vince53]

One of the frustrating parts about being a big-time gamer is that I can find very few free games that are worth the time they take to download. Back in my 16-bit days, that wasn't the case.

 

[badger906]

digital download only games would kill pc gaming for me, id be waiting about 20+ hours per game download..

 

[PooMan UK]

If I was a gaming company I'd rather sell at £10 to 300 people than £30 to 100 people .... profit margin isn't as high but I'm still making money and there's more people that get to enjoy my game + if it's any good they'll be queuing up for the sequel ...

 

[badger906]

thing is its not the game makers that set the product value, its the stores..

Game are the worst for profiteering in the uk! they are selling games like bf3 and cod mw3 for the pc for £42.99...

 

[Richardc269]

And it's probably $60-$70 for the game in the U.S.

 

[EvilOzzmess]

thing is its not the game makers that set the product value, its the stores..

Game are the worst for profiteering in the uk! they are selling games like bf3 and cod mw3 for the pc for £42.99...

Not quite true, at least not for the direct download of games off of, say, Electronic Art's website. There's no re-seller, no distribution/packing, or material costs at all involved for those. Yet they (last I checked) charge the same as the ones on store shelves, with the material costs (disk, case, booklet etc), shipping cost and resellers cut. It's disgusting, IMO and this type of cutthroat business practice is what did kill the economy, and what is preventing its recovery (their excuse for not hiring and etc. these days is that people aren't spending any money... well, DUH! Companies do not understand that they have to GIVE IT TO GET IT (if they aren't employing Americans, how can they expect Americans to be able to spend money?! All I'm saying).



And sinbin, I know if they did go entirely digital jobs would be lost (but probably only from China... they certainly don't manufacture anything here at home in the US anymore. Having PC games go entirely or else majority of the time, digital download, wouldn't even affect Gamestop and other types of companies because as they've been complaining, PC games are being under-sold out to these damned Console Systems), but you know what... the sake of a few over in Communist China producing all of our stuff shouldn't drag down everyone else and equate to having a heck of a lot more of our money being sucked out of our wallets, because of these corporations using the minimal digital content manufacturing to a disk, booklet and cheap plastic case as an excuse to hike up prices by 50% or more (production on a single game probably costs them less than $7, with having a machine rip the game onto a disk or two, then a machine printing the booklet, and having either a machine or a person slap them into a plastic case and shove them into a box). If these gaming companies don't want to stick with a fair and honest price for these games in physical copies, then that's why I suggested they rely mostly on digital, for those who don't care about having a disk and frills. Then they have no excuse for charging $50-60, sometimes even $80 for games, as again, digital downloads cost these companies maybe $10 in bandwidth a month to host JUST that single game file on their server.

Then again, for those who still want a physical copy for one reason or another, then fine. Get the overpriced physical copy, and everyone else who's happy with downloading the same one for less without the manufacturer and reseller costs being gouged out, then that should also still be an option. By "entirely" I was really getting at "mostly", as I know there are hardcore gaming fanboys who like to display their games and that's fine. But the rest of us just want to play the game and not have to spend a week's worth of part-time, $8.50/hr pay on them to do it. That's just insane and I for one would like some of what these titan CEO's and Presidents have been smoking! They keep asking why we're not spending and they're struggling... well, that's why. Too high of prices, people have little to no money because they are all offshoring to other Nations, and we're sick and tired of being ripped off and are aware of it now, so aren't falling for it as readily as we normally would if we had jobs and money to blow (those days are long gone, I fear).

 

[biggles1000]

thing is its not the game makers that set the product value, its the stores..

Game are the worst for profiteering in the uk! they are selling games like bf3 and cod mw3 for the pc for £42.99...

yeah, I completely agree with you there on that. The few shops that do still sell PC games really couldn't give a... ahem about the prices they have for PC games. They always keep their eyes on their console game prices, keeping them fairly low and competitive, but once the original RRP sticker goes on the PC games they sell, it rarely goes down. and yes, Game in particular GameStation used to have a reasonable range of old PC games at fairly decent prices, but there are few GameStation stores that have a PC section anymore and the staff are all useless (they break the trading standards, they ignore customers, they lie to customers...). HMV are just as bad with keeping their eyes on competitive pricing, they don't even keep the prices the same on the same products in the same store! game should take a look at how HMV Group is going down the drain and think "hmm, maybe we should change and be more attentive".

to be honest, Steam isn't much better with their pricing which I presume the publishers have a hand in, but that could just be because the publishers want to exploit the downloaders' market. Anyone know what slice of the price Valve keep? Just look at all the Sims 3 prices... Do they not want to sell to a larger audience??

 

[Richardc269]

thing is its not the game makers that set the product value, its the stores..

Game are the worst for profiteering in the uk! they are selling games like bf3 and cod mw3 for the pc for £42.99...

Not quite true, at least not for the direct download of games off of, say, Electronic Art's website. There's no re-seller, no distribution/packing, or material costs at all involved for those. Yet they (last I checked) charge the same as the ones on store shelves, with the material costs (disk, case, booklet etc), shipping cost and resellers cut. It's disgusting, IMO and this type of cutthroat business practice is what did kill the economy, and what is preventing its recovery (their excuse for not hiring and etc. these days is that people aren't spending any money... well, DUH! Companies do not understand that they have to GIVE IT TO GET IT (if they aren't employing Americans, how can they expect Americans to be able to spend money?! All I'm saying).



And sinbin, I know if they did go entirely digital jobs would be lost (but probably only from China... they certainly don't manufacture anything here at home in the US anymore. Having PC games go entirely or else majority of the time, digital download, wouldn't even affect Gamestop and other types of companies because as they've been complaining, PC games are being under-sold out to these damned Console Systems), but you know what... the sake of a few over in Communist China producing all of our stuff shouldn't drag down everyone else and equate to having a heck of a lot more of our money being sucked out of our wallets, because of these corporations using the minimal digital content manufacturing to a disk, booklet and cheap plastic case as an excuse to hike up prices by 50% or more (production on a single game probably costs them less than $7, with having a machine rip the game onto a disk or two, then a machine printing the booklet, and having either a machine or a person slap them into a plastic case and shove them into a box). If these gaming companies don't want to stick with a fair and honest price for these games in physical copies, then that's why I suggested they rely mostly on digital, for those who don't care about having a disk and frills. Then they have no excuse for charging $50-60, sometimes even $80 for games, as again, digital downloads cost these companies maybe $10 in bandwidth a month to host JUST that single game file on their server.

Then again, for those who still want a physical copy for one reason or another, then fine. Get the overpriced physical copy, and everyone else who's happy with downloading the same one for less without the manufacturer and reseller costs being gouged out, then that should also still be an option. By "entirely" I was really getting at "mostly", as I know there are hardcore gaming fanboys who like to display their games and that's fine. But the rest of us just want to play the game and not have to spend a week's worth of part-time, $8.50/hr pay on them to do it. That's just insane and I for one would like some of what these titan CEO's and Presidents have been smoking! They keep asking why we're not spending and they're struggling... well, that's why. Too high of prices, people have little to no money because they are all offshoring to other Nations, and we're sick and tired of being ripped off and are aware of it now, so aren't falling for it as readily as we normally would if we had jobs and money to blow (those days are long gone, I fear).

I agree with you 100% on this. This is why I wait for the prices to hit $30 because I refuse to pay more for it than that, and if the company doesn't like it, tough diddly, they can kiss my white rear-end and live with it, because I have all the time in the world to wait for these games to drop in price (mainly because I don't work, or go to school).