Topic: Why are video games priced so high?

I thought this would make an interesting discussion on a thought I had.
Compare video games to other media specifically movies I have wondered why are games so much higher then movies?

Now take for example on both WWE 2K17 was released on PS4 and Xbox One for $59.99 here in NA. Now on that same day Ghostbusters was released on Blu-ray for $24.99. Now it doesn't matter what game it is or movie that's generally the going rate (just comparing base products, not including special or deluxe edition).Digital is even worse where Ghostbusters on the PSN store is $3.99 and WWE 2K17 is $59.99, again for the standard release.

Now I understand that there's budgets and such but is the price to make a game vs a movie that much more expensive? I know with games you have various developers like graphics, sound, and then there's voice actors and such while a movie has directors, cameramen, actors and actresses. Heck even CG movies like for example Pixar which are made very similar to how a game is made still go alot cheaper then a game.

Am I missing something or do gamers just get screwed for their choice of entertainment? Do games really cost that much more to make them a big budget Hollywood movie. Even back in the NES era when I am sure a game didn't cost as much as a movie to make the price of a game was alot higher then a movie.

Anyway just a thought.

Games have actually gotten cheaper to purchase when you factor in inflation, despite the fact that budgets have sky-rocketed over the past couple of generations. This is why you're seeing DLC, Season Passes, pre-order bonuses, and all of the other nonsense.

Consider for a moment that recent Assassin's Creed titles had 1,000 person development teams. 1,000!

Also, movies get a lot of their money from box office sales. You don't need to sell the newest Avengers or Star Wars for an arm & a leg when it already made it's money back at the box office.

But those tickets aren't sold at $60 a piece. I don't know about elseware but the most a ticket goes around where I live is $9.75.

And movies have 1000's of people working on them too.

@Tasuki: Movies here cost currently around 2.50-4.00USD but when it comes to imported stuff like electronic goods they're very expensive for us due to our weak currency/exchange rate. Take games for example, a 60USD game is multiplied by 4.2 currently. While an iPhone 6 (16GB) cost around 550USD and that's without subscribing to a service provider, yet.

I think movies are more commercial and have a wider consumers market compared to video games.

But movies appeal to a way larger audience. I mean Deadpool was R rated and still made more than $130,000,000 in the openning weekend. By comparison, Uncharted 4 shattered sales records as I recall, and sold 2.7 million copies in the first week, or roughly $162MM at 60 bucks a pop. Both those figures are gross revenue, so the cost of production needs to paid off as do the movie theatres or stores/distribution channels. So basically it is simple economics: if there were as many people playing games as movies, they could be sold cheaper.

Yeah, same here (price wise), but that wasn't really the point.

The point was more that unlike games, the home release is more of a second chance for films, rather than the be all, end all.

If a movie was a hit at the box office, anything earned by the home release is pure profit. If it does averagely at the box office, it may have some way to go to get to profitability, but not all the way. If it flops at the box office, they'll just be happy to get back anything.

In either case, there's really no need for films to go for higher than they are now.

First up, video games are cheaper than they've ever been. Video games are cheaper now than some games were during the SNES days, and that doesn't even take inflation into account.

Regarding the comparison to other media, I don't think it's necessarily a case of gamers getting screwed for their choice of entertainment, but rather a bang for your buck thing. It costs £40/$60 for a new game in shops. For that price you can get a game like Uncharted 4 which will give you around 15 hours of entertainment even if you only play it once. Then there's a multiplayer mode too. Once you start throwing things like Call of Duty or FIFA into the ring, with the countless hours people spend playing them online, the numbers get even more ridiculous.

A movie ticket costs you around £10 over here, and that's before you've been fleeced for popcorn, pick 'n' mix, and coke. It lasts two hours. If you buy the Blu-Ray upon release it will cost you £15 and still last two hours. How many times are you really going to watch it? Is it really better value than a game?

The fact is, a video game is a more robust product than a movie. That's why they cost more. They're worth more. That's not to say that they have more artistic value, but just that as a product, they have more perceived value because of how much use you'll get out of it. That's why two hour games like Gone Home are cheaper, and why people booted right off when The Order was revealed to be a $60 game that lasted five hours.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that bigger games are inherently worth more money than smaller ones - I for one would much rather pay $60 for something like Gone Home than I would for, say, another Assassin's Creed - but that it's the perception of how much content there is that justifies the cost of a video game over a movie.

Video games are cheaper if you factor in inflation and games also have a very short window of opportunity to sell. Movies may well seem cheaper to buy but more often than not they have several opportunities to make their money back - firstly at the box office, then via home retail (DVD's, Blu-rays etc) and then via big deals with TV distributors like Sky (who also sell the movie via SkyStore and to rent via SkyBoxOffice before showing on SkyCinema) before finally making a few more 'dollars' through the terrestrial or smaller channels - they all pay something to the studios to show their movies. A movie may last around 2hrs as well so cost per hour can make movies very expensive - especially if you look at the price of 4k HDR Blurays which are around half the price of a AAA game.

Games have a limited window of opportunity and a smaller audience too. Its often high risk with the competition. I know that often games don't need to sell that many copies to be profitable - look at Uncharted, that sold less than 3m and yet was profitable enough to see a sequel. A game like FFxv, 10yrs in the making with huge production costs only needs to sell 10m copies to be profitable - there is over 65m console gamers without factoring the PC market. But often a game drops down the sales chart very quickly and often within months of release, can be found with big discounts.

I don't believe many games need to sell DLC, add in micro-transactions etc to be profitable at all. I don't believe these are in place to offset production costs. These are in place to maximise profits. A game can easily become profitable and we see companies like Activision, EA etc all making massive quarterly profits but their overall profits have dropped. Some of that is down to the fact that games take longer to make, therefore less releases in general and rising production costs too. These 'extras' just increase the profit margin. We are seeing a number of games though that are continually supported long after the release. Development doesn't stop when the game goes gold nowadays, some of that team are working on new content. Obviously games have a staggered development - by that I mean you can't start animating the next game before its written, scripted, storyboarded, voice recorded etc so those working on MP (for example) may well be last in the development chain and to keep them employed, they continue to work on the game.

If you look at the cost of a game and compare it to a ticket to a sporting event, a ticket to the theatre or to a concert, the price is very reasonable - especially considering the potential hours worth of entertainment they offer.

Firstly, games have gotten cheaper over time. And as @johncalmc pointed out, without inflation games are still cheaper. Even in the N64 era, some games would still cost £70. With inflation rates included we're looking at around £80/£90 today for Turok on the N64.

The film comparison is one that doesn't quite translate over. Firstly, most films are around the 2 hour mark. Most games in the Triple A space are over 10 hours if they are telling a linear story. And those that are multi-player focus have to balance so many elements in order for people to want to keep playing.

Also, movies are a linear experience. Everything you see is within four frames. Everything is controlled and given to the audience. Whereas games have numerous levels of interaction, and player freedom within an environment. Even a game that has a more linear progression like The Last of Us has multiple changing variables due to the fact that the player is controlling the game. There are far more processes at work than in a movie. That's before you even get to the aspect of creating a usable and satisfying control scheme and also thinking through the mechanics of a game that allow enough player freedom.

Boardgames also cost more than movies for this reason. It's extremely hard to create mechanics that allow for a variety of choices and play styles. Movies don't give you a choice, it is what it is. Whilst I would never say creating a film is easy, you only have to think about what's inside that frame and how it sounds. That's it.

Today Triple A video games also use lots of equipment and employ roles within traditional film PLUS all of the game design elements needed to create it. Naughty Dog are a huge component of this. I also remember reading about Courtney Ford's experience of playing Piper in Fallout 4. She worked on that role for two years with over 100,000 words of dialogue, and she was a character you can limit your interactions with! And indie games are also complicated in the way they work due to the interactive nature of the medium.

I don't necessarily buy into the idea of a shorter game needing to be cheaper as I feel it's relative to your overall experience, but we as gamers actually have things really damn good when it comes to pricing. Especially today!

Games only have a single revenue stream, though. Movies make money through cinematic launch, then subsequent DVD/Blu-ray/streaming options.

@get2sammyb:
It's funny people are mad at games remasters which probably do add a bit of profit to a project, or a second revenue stream, but nobody bats an eyelid too much at Star Wars getting released several times on a medium , in several versions, back in the cinema etc and I'm a star wars fan.

Comparing video games to movies thats an easy one. Movies can be sold cheaper when they are released to the home market because a large number have been released at the cinema already and have had a chance to recoup costs. Video games only have the one system which they are made for. Also with movies a majority of homes have either internet access or a dvd/bluray player so the potentail market for selling movies is huge compared to video games.

I also think the higher cost of purchasing the game new takes into consideration that the game will probably be resold many times on the 2nd hand market therefore generating no revene for the company. It would be intersting to know how the game would be priced if there was no 2nd market would the price of games lower or stay the same. With PC market they have effectvely killed that through steam but have to contend with the piracy which again reduces revenue.

Do I see a game being expensve at £40? Compare it to going to see a movie at the cinema thats £10 for 2 hours. A game is a bargain in comparison to that. Also factor in you can sell the games you play so if you finish games quickly or buy them at the right time a game may only end up costing you £5-£10 if you trade or sell.

Alot of good points made particularly the length of a game compared to a movie. That I can see.

@dryrain: I can see where you're going with the reselling and used games but at the same time that doesn't make sense with digital games. Also, alot of places sell used movies in the same way places sell used games. Not sure if they have places like that in the UK but they have them here in the US.

As others have said, games can be justified as being more expensive than movies because the market for them is smaller. I do disagree though with the constant claims that we should be happy they aren't even more expensive as, by inflation, they cost a lot more in the past. No one ever looks at what costs were incurred in the process of making games in the past compared to now, for instance you have games coming on cheap discs now, whereas they used to come on expensive proprietary cartridges. Further games used to come in larger boxes with proper manuals and other goodies that would be part of some £100 collector's edition nowadays. Logistics for shipping games around the world was also a much greater expense when you needed a dedicated setup to produce the cartridges and move them in those bigger boxes.

The products then and now are not like for like and with a much larger customer base these days there is an argument for games to actually be cheaper. If we go on actual prices paid and not RRP I also have seen games increase in price over the last decade since I could easily get a sort after new release for ~£28 on the PS3 and am lucky to get below £35 this generation. This is at the same time as seeing games cut up for DLC and even microtransactions added to full price games which are defended by the gaming community as a way of keeping costs down. It comes down to the fact that games are more expensive than movies by a 3-4X margin because we, as consumers, accept that cost and finance departments aren't going to charge anything other than the most profitable price.

@Dichotomy: Right. On the whole packaging thing that brought up another thought I had. Where as you said that games years ago were cartridges, had colorful instruction booklets and even in some cases like an RPG had maps and other things and today we don't have any of those. Heck we are even lucky if we get a list of instructions.

But on that token what's the deal with digital? Digital you get none of that? If you look at movies again a digital movie costs far less then a physical copy. They don't pay for cases, discs transportation, storage etc. But games digital is the same as physical. Which is why one reason I won't buy a digital game unless it has a major sale.

@Tasuki: The general reason that digital is so expensive (on consoles at least) is that Sony and Microsoft (and Nintendo, almost forgot them) still need bricks and mortar stores to shift their hardware, so they agree to not undercut those stores with digital releases. Unfortunately this generally means charging RRP for digital games on their own stores. The PC doesn't have a company owning it, so no such deals need to be made and it allows for generally better prices (on top of the fact there is no licensing fee to develop on PC).

With the digital sales for PS4 there is also a lack of competition. Apart from Green man gaming no one else sells digital PS4 games. I do not expect games to be cheaper digitally because with music the digital version is never much cheaper than a physical copy. I would like them to come in around the same price as a physical game though. Then I would buy a lot more digitally. The digital games need to be kept on servers so there is a cost there but I have no idea what that would cost.

The server cost for hosting games as well has to be paid for am I right in assuming that the company who makes the game pays for that? if so thats an ongoing cost which is incurred for years after the games is released.

@dryrain: Server cost would factor in if the game is F2P but otherwise I would think that's where the money gained from PSN+ goes to.