Dear Future Gamer

Quoting from a news article in FG32: "Perhaps there's a message here. Yes, videogames are far too expensive. Isn't it about time they cost the same as a music CD or a new hardback book - against which they're competing for our cash? £14.99 sounds about right, eh?"

Well, in an ideal world that would be fantastic, wouldn't it? But,
realistically, with consoles and PCs becoming ever more advanced, the development time is going to be ever on the increase and publishing a game at the 14.99 just isn't going to be realistic. Unless the games industry can be guaranteed of selling as many copies of the game as a major Hollywood release, which I don't think is very likely at the moment, particularly with a three-way console battle going on, it's not going to happen.

But games are becoming more valuable than a video nowadays anyway. For example, Final Fantasy is supposed to last you 100 hours (okay, realistically that probably boils down to 40 game hours plus, say, a bit more if you die). Compare that to a video which gives you two hours if you're lucky. That's 20 times more entertainment time for, what, three times the price? (Or double the price now). And as for a book, ultimately that's a one-man job (okay, not always, but the majority of good fiction).

In the past games came out for 10 quid (or even three quid!) but most were developed by very, very small programming teams over a comparatively short space of time. I certainly don't want to start paying more than 40 quid, but if we're not contributing towards the industry financially, isn't it just going to die?

Of course, I could be taking your point a little too seriously, but even so, people whinge about the price of games all the time, but I don't think the publishers are doing it just to victimise us, are they?

John

FG: The best news we've heard for a long time is Virgin's slashing of its PlayStation games to under 30 quid - a bold move that's been taken up by HMV and others. There are numerous reasons why a game costs so much and a lot of it has to do with how much the developers receive (it can take up to two years and more to develop a game and the developers do need to eat during this time) but there's also a cynical 'we can charge 'em this much' element added by publishers. The best way to prove that a lower price point for software works is to buy more games. If you'd normally buy one full-price game a month, buy two at the new price point!