Yes on both accounts. And new PC releases are rarely less than 50€.

Its revenue generation, robbery by another name. Console companies know full well that whatever the mass market says, it will buy on price for something that is put forward as part of the "grass is greener over the hill" syndrome. In the same way that electronic goods are "cheap" in a relative sense and attract near useless warranties as add ons (but in fact the warranties are the main revenue source by design, not the marketed product).

Industrial Gas companies will extol the virtues of their superior "oxygen/hydrogen mix" "amazing aromas for public places", whatever, they'll stuff anything they can into cylinders to attract customers - because their mainstream business is not selling gas (they lose a fortune on that), their mainstream business is renting cylinders .... and in reality should be named the XYZ Cylinder Rental company", not the "XYZ Industrial Gases Company"

So console games have their price "enhanced" as its a captive market, as part of the whole Strategic Marketing concept for Consoles. A market that is unlikely to moan too much as originally they made much to their mates of being in the "brave new world" of consoles, "leading edge", a "trailblazer", and "cheap hardware". Later they discover the game price ..... but you will not hear much about that ....

In terms of marketing and positioning its the same principle as prices of printers and prices of the cartridges to go with them - cheap printer, expensive cartridges. Marketers know full well the owners will not yell about price of ink/games etc as they were previously yelling about the great deal they had (the one the marketer let them have).

The most famous Strategic Marketing concept of the 20th Century, and still survives today, is the infamous "buy one get one free" offer - that one still ropes people in by the multi-million

Never ever underestimate the power and reach of Strategic Marketing campaigns, most of us are in the middle of one without even knowing it. From the Marketers stance, its like watching lambs to the slaughter

Regards
Zy

Thanks for this address. I just sent 'em my 23 cents worth.

Is that really the correct address?

I checked terraspore.com and it was just a forum site, with no immediately apparent connection to Maxis or EA.

Hmm. I didn't think to hit the web page for that domain. I agree that it looks independent of Maxis and EA (although I suppose a contractual thing might be in the background).

But the mail didn't bounce, so maybe they're doing something roughly like collecting petition signatures.

The prices simply dont adapt to the euro to dollar exchange rate. the price for console games was at 60 euro (or equivalent) back in the 90's and didnt changed since then. same with the price for pc games. (roughly 40-50€ depending on the game) at least in germany.
Thats why i buy most of my games at online stores since i discovered that method.

i said this before in another thread or another site. in the 80's when computer gaming took off and companies like EA started earning profits, even the best copy protection was crackable. i even remember having programs that were specifically designed to crack copy protection.

today the companies are trying to restrict this more and more and their revenues are decreasing. yet still the crackers are out there. plus there is so much resentment now coming from those that buy the programs that we are starting to turn our backs on the industry. SoaSE was the first game I bought and played since Freelancer. A couple of years where no one buys games will pretty dramatically change the gaming landscape.

"Would you like the guy who sold you the car to be allowed to decide where you can drive your car, for how long, what you do with it, how you can drive it and who can be a passenger in it?"

Even better

You'd be happy to know that Bioshock for the XBOX 360 currently is sold for 105 USD in Norway.
The Playstation 3 ... 693,15 USD
XBOX Elite - 576,31 USD
Frontlines Fuel of War Special Edition (PC) - 91USD



I just love the 'dongle experience' for 90-100 USD per game.

The thing I can not understand about the con$oles is that .. why the hell can't I install them to the hard drive, like I could with a modified XBOX.

"The thing I can not understand about the con$oles is that .. why the hell can't I install them to the hard drive, like I could with a modified XBOX."

You're guilty until proven innocent in the minds of the big name developers.

Frankly, these companies create their own piracy problems by charging too much for their games.

That should never be a justification for piracy. The games will be priced at the amount that the company feels will maximise their profits from the sale of it, as with any other good in this world. Thus pirating that game because of this is tantamount to stealing. Yes an increased price for a game will lead to increased piracy (the benefit of piracy increases), but that shouldn't be a major factor for a company when determining the price, just as a normal shop shouldn't factor in the likelihood of their customers breaking into their store and making off with their goods if they set their price too high. Also the reasoning that setting a high price the company is creating a piracy problem suggests that the company should give out the game for free, since any price above that introduces at least some incentive to pirate it.

Of course making the pirated product superior to the legally bought product is actively encouraging piracy, by effectively saying to paying customers 'look, if you get the pirated version, not only do you get it for free, but you can play it too! And instead you've gone and paid us for this DRM-infested product. Suckers!'

Meanwhile the logic of 'oh we need greater DRM because of all the pirates out there' is self perpetuating it seems - if you introduce draconian DRM measures (that don't manage to prevent a crack of course) which anger many of your customers such that they then don't buy the game/future games, and possibly even crack your game so they can play it without DRM, you're then going to take that as a sign that piracy is growing and that even more DRM is needed.

Should try living in Australia, when our dollar started skyrocketing everyone in the gaming community was going sweet what with the prices in America being roughly sixty dollars for a new retail game or fifty for a digital distribution it was going to work out to be a very good deal if buying off steam or other sites but no... they realised it and simply had the customers from Australia pay in Australian dollars on an Australian server where the prices were still 80 to 90 each.

Agreed, but many people do what they shouldn't .



Well, maximizing profit isn't equivalent to minimizing piracy. The price/profit curve and the price/piracy curve are two curves that may have different maximum and minimum values.

In fact, if the prices are really pushing piracy that high, I don't wonder if they've completely missed the demand cure and are not actually maximizing profits.

I do wonder if these companies are really doing the math on this one. I'd love to see a chart with the supply and demand curves on it.



Not necessarily, as it's not an all or nothing deal.

The truth is that business is rarely as simple as a single supply/demand curve. There are often actually many curves that play a role in constraining the price point, and often the curves are not very clean, as they usually based on statistical estimates. A good businessperson should take all of the constraints into consideration, and not blindly follow a simple supply/demand/profit chart.

When the effects in question may be having only a very marginal impact, there is little point in considering them all, because there is a cost involved in such considerations. Information about smaller effects will be much scarcer and therefore not only less reliable but also more costly to obtain, while also being of less value, meaning the costs likely outweigh the benefits. Furthermore the overall demand curve for the good will already have piracy factored in, since it will be the amount of the game demanded at the relevant price (and if the company is working off the amount sold at various prices, either on real data or on market research, this would be what would be used, e.g. asking people 'would you buy this game for x price? what about y' or more accurately, what price they would stop buying it, instead of 'if you couldn't pirate this game would you buy it for x price or y'?). Thus there is no need to consider piracy further/twice as you seem to be suggesting, and a good business person should generally be looking to maximise profits.

Apparently they are considering piracy data separately, otherwise they wouldn't notice high piracy levels.



While often true, also sometimes false. There is an entire class of businesses called "non-profits" that make no profit at all, but provide very valuable services. Indeed, even within a for-profit organization, they can decide to maximize something else instead of maximizing profits. Companies that are not publicly traded can often get away with maximizing something else because they don't answer to shareholders. Very small businesses and sole proprietorships will often get away with a "make just enough profit to pay the bills and pay the employees" philosophy. If you're just a single person selling a product, you don't need to act like a large business. In addition, even large businesses like Microsoft can get away with maximizing profits in their core products (Windows, Office) and maintain other products that are not as profitable, but supply added value (Internet Explorer). In fact, large businesses often have the power to maintain temporary losses in order to kill smaller businesses and raise the barrier of entry into a market. This proved to be fatal to Netscape . . .

i think i will, but i just want spore so bad. I even uninstalled the trial SCC because of the DRM it has

I feel the same way about Dragon Age (I'm hoping by the time it's released EA will have come to their senses, but I have my doubts) and I felt the same way about Mass Effect.

Check out the CnC3 forums to get a feel for what EA does to games with a hardcore following.

Game released in Beta, bug ridden.
Slow & poor patching.
Poor balancing.
Ignored cannon from earlier installments.
No forum search.
Few players on online due to bugs, desyncs and disconnectors.
Developing the expansion killed the main game.
Then the expansion has been killed from the start as the dev team allocate resources to RA3 instead of supporting the product.

A potentially great game let down. It could and should have been so good.

And still people that looked forward to C&C 3 now look forward to RA 3....it's like people can't think for themselves....

STARDOCK FTW!!!  
Down with EA and stupid DRM's   
Support PC gaming!!