Downloadable Games Under-priced, Says 360 Dev

fuck you video game faggot

I for one am far less likely to buy an XBLA game at $15 than I am at $10. I'd buy very few, if any, at $20 or higher. Most of them are not worth it.

$10 is impulse purchase range for me. $20 is not.

I agree with him. $10 for Bionic Commando is absurdly cheap. Braid and Castle Crashers for $15 each is a steal as well.

box or not, 10 bucks is the sweet spot at which I buy random games which I wouldn't buy otherwise

Also I am really, really glad there are no games for x99 points or 467 points or whatever random psychological comforting numbers they come up with.

People think they don't make enough money for what they do. News at eleven.

MS is reviving the ideals of the shareware days with the creators club thing, at least that is how it feels to me, 200, 400, 800 point pricings, seems fine to me. We are going to end up with thousands of games on there and I hope they get a user-rating system in place and all that. Seriously, downloading a free trial version (even with the 4 minute limit) and playing it reminds me of spending $2 at the bookstore to pick out some random shareware title and play the fuck out of it. All my games back in the day were shareware, and I think that the only other thing MS could do to sweeten creators club is by allowing members to submit special "trial versions" of their games which have just 1 level and aren't just a time-limited version... Actually, smart people submitting their games would streamline the Trial-mode so that it doesn't put the Player through any sort of menus, just give them a how to play screen and let them get into the action, and put a cap on how far they can go in that 4 minutes. You gotta sell it in those 4 minutes, and I hope that MS DOES NOT increase the time limit (people have been bitching about it on the creator club forums).
Anyway, look back to all the shitty shareware that were out in the late 80s/early 90's and then look at how some of those games branched off into prominent developers still around today, all that is possible from the creators club, sure we've had game portal sites spewing casual game match 3 clones for a while now, but all that is PC/Mac and your selection of potential customers is all over the place.. with it on Xbox at least you've got a healthy mix, most probably leaning towards hardcore gamers, so take advantage of that, I'm rambling, I'm gonna go play some L4D. HRRRRRRrrrggggknnnnn make games, hrRRrrrgkkkfsdnfsjdfn stop bitching about the prices, have fun ggz

Christ no one understands basic economics. If you raise the price fewer people will buy it. There is one price point at which you will make the most money. I would like to see reasoning for why this point is currently too low.

Because honestly, I wouldn't pay more than $15 for anything on XBL arcade.

I want to go on the record and say that most boxed games are overpriced.

Microsoft's price points are were clear from the start, and so games should be built with that in mind; don't build a 600 point game when no such price point exists.

It's still a massive profit - the games have no manufacturing costs, only development costs.

The guy should play some of his own games.... Now tell me they feel under priced!

Whatever. I'm much more likely to buy two $10 games than one $20 game - I think the power of DLC as a marketing tool is that it is often an impulse buy, and the higher the price is the less likely someone is to download it on a whim. Besides, a lot of these arcade titles, even great ones like Castle Crashers, aren't far above the level of the better free online Flash games.

Wow a developer saying his product is more valuable and he should get paid more. What a shock. Dude, we all feel that way about our job.

Mr. Fouts, go ahead and box 'Castle Crashers' and put it on store shelves. Price it the way you like, 20 or 25 EUR as it seems and watch it rot. In the meanwhile I'll be picking up the Orange Box for 14.50 EUR.

It is a very difficult thing to price games correctly, personaly I judge a games value on how much play time I personaly get out of it, which can vary greatly, a game could be massive and only keep me interested for 10-20 hours tops, where as the occasional small arcade game could keep me coming back time and time again, how you convert peoples individual tastes into a an actual retail price is difficult, unless maybe we go back to shareware releases.

I think instead of buying like 3 Xbox lives games I would have bought zero games if they were more expensive, and having not played them because of the price I would not have recommended them to my friends who also purchased some of those games.

lose/lose imho

Hmmmm, this guy can take a big step back, and literally fuck his own face

This is not going to get a good response from price-sensitive gamers but I sorta agree. I wish devs of games like CC or Braid got more. I'd be willing to pay $20-25 for some of those games.

From what I've heard talking to iPhone game developers, anything over .99 pretty much dooms you to no sales.

Give me the ability to resell my licenses for my downloaded games that I no longer play, and then I might be willing to consider paying more than about $10 for a downloaded game.

Castle Crashers was hilariously overpriced and overrated. Did they even fix the multiplayer yet?

If you want to pay more for DLC then move to Sweden or Japan. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Points#Pricing_differences_between_regions

If Castle Crashers were $30, I would have never bought it. Same with BCR. Neither would have enough others.

Microsoft gets 10-30% of the earnings you get. Sell a game for 10 bucks a pop and you can possibly make 7-9 bucks a download. Castle crashers probably sold pretty darn well, you are looking at lots of cash.

Some guy for the iPhone made a clone Tetris like application and at 5 bucks a DL made $250,000 in less than 2 months. That puts him above the highest middle class salary for a year. I think even after the money you put into a game you are going to make plenty of cash as a small DLC game developer.

I think Nathan hit the nail on the head in the second to the last paragraph. They want to have their cake and eat it to. You can't assume if you sold 100,000 units at $10 you would have sold 100,000 units at $30. But they jack the price up and get a better profit margin then complain not enough people are buying games.

There have been so many great games coming out recently I have had to make the choice of which ones I would buy first and those that will just have to wait. If games were cheaper I would own more of them... but they aren't so I don't, and some games I held off on buying I never bought in the end anyways because something better came out later.

My official response on this is Fuck you dude.. that is all.

Please sir, can I have some more...

The point this jackhole is hosing up is that paying $10-$15 dollars for a downloadable game is still a better deal for those developers than having them find a publisher to make them a box, the cost of burning discs, the cost of advertising, and the cost of distributing.


The developer gets a MUCH larger chunk out of that $10 dollars than he would going the brick and mortar method.

Bionic Commando sucked and I got sick of Castle Crashes after 15 minutes.

What do ya know, sounds like they want more money. ;D

$10 I would pay without thinking twice. $15, there would be some hesitation and $20 is pretty much out of the question, at least with the current selection of games.

I think this is where the "episodic" thing should come into play. Say $5-10 for the base game to get people hooked, then $5 level packs or something. Then the people who didn't like it won't feel too ripped off, and the people who did like it can continue to support the developer.

Despite my desire to support developers of great games and also of those who take risks, I'd have to argue that the price point is about where it should be. At $10 I will take a "risk" purchasing a game I may not spend that much time with or on a game that I don't know much about, hasn't got the most glowing reviews. Push that to $20 and only games with tons of post-release praise will even get my consideration.

If he's offering full refunds for crappy games we buy then I have no complaints.

I rather pay 98c for HL than 20 USD for a DLC game on XBox/Wii

I bought and played Rearmed for all of 10 minutes, it's not worth more than 10 bucks. Get over yourself mate.

"Boy's crazy, put him in one of them crazy buckets!"

Someone kick this guy in the balls and then as he bends over, bring out the broomstick.

Anything more than $20 is a no go, most games don't even deserve that price point. The price point of SSF2T remix makes me hesitate but i'll probably end up getting it, if it was any other remade game chances are very good that it wouldn't be bought. I do think Wipeout HD was worth $20.

Well, a contract is a contract. If he thinks his game is of such value that it should cost more, then by all means, go with standard distribution. Factor in fabrication, advertisement, delivery, retail floor space, etc etc.

Or, take your game, which in this case is a good one, put it into a system that will put it in front of literally millions of gamers, get a name for yourself as your repution (deservedly) grows, and perhaps you will be able to carry your next game through traditional retail channels.

If you noticed, most of the big successes on Xbox Marketplace are games that would never have been picked up by a publisher, because it didn't fit into the cookie cutter approach they currently have (Shooters, RTS, MMO, Sports Sim, Fighting Sim and that's about it).

Be happy that there was a low barrier to entry for your game. You can charge more for the sequel.

As a corrolary, remember who you're selling to. Most young gamers have only experienced the above genres. They wouldn't know Zork if it bit them on the ass. They certainly don't remember Maniac Mansion, and they never saw Out of This World. Half the value of the Marketplace is that you can get new game models out to these people at low cost, both for the publisher and the customer.

Isn't that win/win?

I think the pricing is deliberate and part of the plan. microsoft is trying to see how high-volume low-price game sales will work.

I was perfectly willing to pay $15 for Castle Crashers and feel it was worth every penny.