acidshaman thinks that Eli Hodapp thinks $10 is the maximum price point

I'd say that only a game that came out as a universal app (for both iPad and iPhone) and included lots of content would be worthy of a price towards what most games on other platforms sell at.
EA brings out a lot of games that are fully in depth versions of the console games and they sell them at a reasonable price. So if they can cost a game at that price I'm sure everyone else can unless it's huge!

 

I don't know... $40 seems high. It just seems that if you wait long enough, a price drop will hit. On Android, Pac Man was free. That spoiled the market for me. Why should I pay $6.99 for a retro game?

Then, once you start thinking along those lines, it quickly becomes, "Why should I pay for any mobile game?"

Gameloft is a prime example... they're a commercial game development company, but they were giving games away for FREE! When's the last time Nintendo was like, "Yo dude, Mario is like 25 years old, we're going to give you Super Mario Bros for free!"

On the consoles, game companies clutch to their content. They jack up the prices because there's hardware involved (carts / disks) and because it's a closed market. Independent developers have a much harder time competing in that market, especially when you have to worry about manufacturing and distributing games. Sure, there are digital downloads, but it's no where near the level of the iTunes store. There are like what... 5 Wiiware games a week?

Basically, I think game prices - industry wide - will fall. It's just easier to make game. Plus, Apple and Google are breaking down walls that protect prices. App stores are hurting mobile gaming and I'm thinking Google TV / Apple TV can start usurping traditional game consoles.

It's pretty much a no-brainer. You can get one $40 game or you can get 40 99¢ games. With so many games available, price isn't the only concern. Time becomes an issue. MMORPGs are worthless to me now... even though many are going free-to-play. I can't be bothered investing hundreds of hours into wack-a-rat gameplay. The iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch gets it right... the bulk of the games are quick and entertaining. They're casual. That brings gaming to a wider audience.

 

Because, however much you may detest, the PSP and DS are a) markets where games can cost $40 no questions answered, and b) are proper gaming consoles. Yes, the iPod is perfectly able to play games but with no physical buttons and the fact that, primarily, the iPod is a multimedia player and so not made for the sole reason of gaming, would not be good for gaming.

It's kind of ironic how the very reason that made the app store successful for games would mean that no long, fully fledged premium games would ever come out on this generation of hardware.

And before you assault me with responses, remember you're on an iPod/iPhone GAMING website, so yes you may pay $40 for a game yet the majority wouldn't, and yes, there are games like Chaos Rings that are big, and a few ports such as COD and GTA, but that's only a few proper games, on DS/PSP virtually all games are fully fleshed out.

 

Yeah games like Time Crisis are a HORRIBLE value for $10. A game like Chaos Rings is a great value but that extra 2 dollars just feels like it's tacked on and makes you evaluate more and not impulse buy which is bad for them. GTA on iPhone is one of the best ports available at a great price point.

There are also plenty of great completely original iDevice titles that go for less than $5.

Developers are out of their mind if they think they can massage the market and push things up past $10. Square and EA are getting too snobby and ignoring that we're not stupid and know they are saving a TON of money on physical product overhead as well as Apple's very reasonable cut for use of the store.

PSP games are also overpriced but because they sell so well in Japan we keep getting good games and sadly way too many exclusives on the PSP that should have been on PS3 (like recently both Valk Chronicles 2 and 3, Phantasy Star Portable 2 (which should have just had a name change and went to console...PSU is old and lame), and KH: Birth By Sleep.

 

You are on the pipe. Especially for the DS. You clearly have NO idea how much shovelware is out there, especially for handhelds. Sure, because developing these physical products is too costly for fart apps you won't see that garbage in a cart/disc handheld but you still see plenty of games that are so bad parents might consider them as a harsher alternative to being grounded.

 

Thats true. The same goes for PSP, but it's not quite as bad as the DS.
I've owned a fat PSP since it was first launched, 5 years ago and I've played plenty of shitty games that have left me feeling ripped off.

 

, Eli seems perplexed by this thread.

Don't worry Eli, I am sure that this thread was started with good intentions and no one is trying to take a cheap shot at you by saying that you are dead wrong.

I for one doubt that it will be over $9.99, but that still remains to be seen.

 

I think he gets it from his avatar.

 

Do they need to be more expensive or do console games need to come down in price?

It's supply and demand. We know that Apple and Google are dominating the mobile market... and that's going to cause problems for the PSP and Nintendo DS. With Google TV, and if Apple TV gets better, traditional consoles could be threatened by app stores. With thousands of independent developers with access to advanced gaming tools, the supply of games is going to go up.

High supply of games... I'm thinking that means the price of games is going to go down.

Why did the Wii do so well this season? It was cheaper and it was casual. That sounds familiar... oh yeah... iOS games are cheaper and it's more casual gaming.

 

Yeah - because all DS and PSP games last for a few minutes.

The point I was trying to make (and kind of messed up because I had to end my rant properly) is that no matter how you may detest, the iPhone is just not as much of a games console as DS and PSP and so I do think it's fair that while I would play MGS: Peace Walker on a PSP for hours for $30 I spend a max of $9.99 on the store.

 

No, it's better than a Game Console. I'm not going to leave the house with a bulky PSP attached to my belt.

 

You, my friend, are delusional.

A)the average price of current appstore apps is a major reason why many people switched over from other handheld gaming devices to the iDevice in the first place.

B)many people who own iDevices, particularly iphones, are casual gamers at best. Only a small percentage of iDevice owners are actually hardcore gamers.

C)The ipod touch is a safe haven for kids. A huge number of kids, who could not fathom having enough disposable income to cover the cost of premium gaming, own ipod touches. I see it all the time on these forums. Kids in grade school or whatever crying about only having a limited amount of money to spend (that limit often being only a few dollars). Look at all the people who use itunes gift cards for purchases. You hear people talking about that all the time too. Why? Often times because they aren't old enough to have their own credit card.

D)Most importantly, iDevice owners are cheap, have a warped sense of self-entitlement, and are, quite simply put, spoiled as hell.

E)If you charge me the same relative price for games, I will abandon the iDevice in favor of the Nintendo 3DS, when it comes out. I will do it in a heartbeat, and I'm betting a whole lot of other people who consider themselves to be serious gamers would follow me.

In short, Eli Hodapp knows what he is talking about. $10 is the ceiling. Only one game, Chaos Rings, has successfully bypassed that ceiling. One game out of tens of thousands, and even that only did so by a FEW extra dollars.

I cannot stress how strongly I disagree with the notion that a truly premium game would sell on the appstore. I don't care what it is. At $40, it will tank. Keep in mind that the development costs of a game selling for $40 would likely be through the roof. Once games start selling that high, they will often need to move 500,000 copies or 1,000,000 copies in order to be considered truly successful, because the budget used to develop the game itself is often times astronomical.

 

D:, this again... there are so many points to touch here... i'll just summarize:

- No, the AppStore won't push the console gaming prices down, totally different markets, thinking they arent is being delusional.

- Yes, prices from the AppStore should rise so that better developers would come to it and actually show them what a real game is for everyone to see. Since they won't go up, they won't do this.

- No, remakes like GTA and PoP do NOT show a develop of the iDevice market. If anything, they show that the iDevice is a escape goat for when a game is all out of milk. "Hey! now that this has been out for 4 years and the games got it, let's sell it to this market, they'll be fascinated and we'll earn a couple more bucks!".

- Thinking that supply and demand, and that sheer ammount of games, rather than judging them by quality, shifts price points... is an insult to economics.

And last but not least...

- The iDevice has a long way to go before being real gaming device, stop talking like it is. For that to be so, the price would have to go up, really.

 

I've only read this first post; I want to respond to it before I lose clarity on the issue by reading the later posts in the thread.

The first thing that we should establish: All app developers have the goal of maximizing profits. There are many different philosophies on how to do this; create a low number of high-quality apps or create lots of low-quality apps, spend your time on customer support or spend more time on actual developing, etc. No matter what, money is the goal. So we cannot ask the question "What would I pay for?" or even "What would some gamers pay for;" we have to ask, "What will developers do in order to maximize profits?"

The second point that is important to my argument is that a large number of iPhone owners are NOT gamers. I know a lot of people who have iPhones and are willing to pay a dollar for a game that they'll play casually when waiting in line, going to sleep, etc. I would even say that this constitutes the majority of iPhone owners; for evidence, look at the proliferation of casual games on the App Store. They dominate. Since "gamers" make up a relatively small portion of the total market, it is harder to make a profit. An example: A vegetarian restaurant opens in a very conservative county in Texas. Less than two percent of the nearby population is vegetarian. The restaurant realizes this, charges a lot of money for their food, but still makes no profit because even the vegetarians do not eat there, opting instead for vegetarian options at a cheaper restaurant.

Another thing that must be looked at is cost. Profit = total revenue - total cost. A "40+ hour RPG" presumably takes a lot more time to create than a casual game such as Doodle Jump (I might be wrong with the specific example, but I am sure that the bigger and more complicated a game is, the more programming hours must go into making it). So by creating more in-depth games and setting a higher price point, a developer is raising his costs and eliminating most of his potential customers. That does not sound like an effective way to maximize profit.

You cite PSP games, and in response to that, I want to point out that the percentage of PSP owners that are gamers is probably much closer to 100%. The rules are different. It's not a fair analogy unless you first qualify it.

 

Well, that depends on definition. I would say that my ipod/iphone is a much better mobile media device but that doesn't make it a better gaming device.

On the main subject, you can easily compare the iphone to the wii, it's cheaper and more casual to the competition, and therefore sells a lot better due to it's mass market appeal. But there is a certain group of gamers who simply will not accept the wii. And because they don't accept it any good games coming out for it get ignored by the "casual" market.

Look at Red Steel 2, it's one of the most hardcore games on the wii, the graphics aren't as good as the other consoles even though they are still good-looking. It uses the controls well for a shooter/hack'n'slash hybrid, I think it's a fantastic game for any system.

It barely sold 150,000 copies. All the hardcore gamers were playing on their consoles and ignored it. It's the same with iphone, all the hardcore handheld gamers have psp's or ds's and most iphone owners are casual gamers. So full-priced hardcore games on the ipod touch will simply not work well at all.

I plan on selling my ipod for a 3ds whenever it comes out as the idevice game market is simply not satisfying my cravings.

 

I LOLed when I saw that, haha. I think he put your name there to attract some attention. That's why I went to this thread.