Video Game Prices
 

The subject of this thread is pretty simple: When you go to the store and you head up to the counter to buy a video game, how much do you expect to pay? 49.95 + Tax, more or less. Heres what shocks me: You know how much profit the store takes away on each videogame purchase you make? 40 bucks. Thats right, the store pays a little more than 10 dollars per game (This according to a friend who works at Best Buy. The employee discount there is you get to buy everything from the store at cost + tax).

Licensing fees don't apply, those are all paid by the publisher. Even when Nintendo was still using cartridges while the PS was using CDs, stores were pulling a 40 buck profit by upping the price. I know MSRPs are that high, by why? Are video game sales really so low that they can't afford to lower the price to attract new customers? I think not, given that many video games these days make more money than movies but still have lower production costs.

So, why are video game prices so high? I can understand prices being high for hardware, hardware is expensive, but software?

We've come to accept that price, so they keep it. Especially if it makes them more money. They're not going to drop the price w/ so many people willing to pay 50 bucks. Not if they can at all help it.

Good point. *contemplates getting job at Best Buy*

Yeah, but heres the thing: How many people can you think of, off hand, that if the prices of all videogames dropped to 20 bucks or so would jump on the bandwagon immediately? I can think of quite a few. I'd venture a guess that it'd be enough to increase their profits, or really, if nothing else to increase the number of fans they have, which is also important.

The price for a new game is sort of factored in three reasons:

1) Unlike a movie, most games are about 20-60 of entertainment hours on Average, with the ability for continual and different experiences.
2) The fact that games areSO popular now, they can jack up the price because, quite frankly, people are going to buy it. People dabated on buying the Matrix Reloaded when it came to DVD.....but hardly any gaming fans debated on buying Metroid Prime, Final Fantasy X or Halo (for each system respectively).
3) The movie industry, although making slightly less than the gaming industry in sales of games at the moment (monetary wise and not number of units sold), still has more 'locations' for sales of movies. Think about it. To buy games you have the Wal-Mart or Target Approach, the GameStop/other Mall store approach, the Semi-large or medium sized Best Buy or Circuit City selection or the small indavidually owned used gamestores. Yet you can buy movies at ALL of these stores...plus tons of other places you'd never expect to hold movies. So because there's more places to buy movies, there's more competition. GameStop has really no other major competitor in the US for stores devoted nearly just to games (although they do sell movies). But movies are so widely sold you can't find one place that is called 'MovieStop' that sells only movies...and has no real competition with another store. SunCoast is out there...but it also has competition from Warehouse, Tower and a host of other places I can't recall off hand. So, simply, because there's so many places to buy movies, they all have to sell them cheap or else someone will just go to another store to save the 5-10 bucks. But since GameStop has little competition and has become such a name in gaming...people just go there and buy games, no questions asked.

So yeah....that's why they can get 50 bucks out of us. And as a #4 reason, which is a little mean to say but...there's a lot of people who were kids and kinda whined and cried until their parents would buy them certain games (hey, I was for a bit). As for us, we've grown up with the mentality that we will take a certain portion of our annual income and stash that not away for college or retirement...but there's just this percent of money we HAVE to use on games. Hey, once again, I'm one of those. Although my money is now being used to buy primarily 'used' games.....with my last game perchase over 40 bucks being...uh....Rogue Squad III I think (which I promptly returned....).

i remember when i got my first job and thought to myself "YES! 100 bucks a week! I can buy a game a week and still have money left over! Woo!" And then I ended up never buying a game, but instead spending money on my car, necessities of life, and bills. And I still haven't bought a game in a long time. It's been probably 3 years since I've bought a game.

Adamark: That's the most depressing thing I've heard in a long time...

Thank god I have a girlfriend.

Uhm, no. I've seen plenty of buy sheets for new releases before, and it is nowhere close to $10/copy that the company pays. On average a game that retails for $49.99 is purchased for about $30-40. Factor in the cost of shipping and the profit margins get smaller and smaller. That's why you see so many people dealing in used games nowadays, because they make a ton more off of them.

Or a job in the military where they pay you extra money for your rent and food and everything.

Anyways, even without Totsu and TIS to explain it for real, it sounded pretty damn farfetched for game stores to buy their merchandise for only $10 a game. If that were true, then most game stores would become entire malls before you knew it. Hell, the Electronic Boutique I shop at would have expanded into the Radio Shack next to it with my purchases alone!