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[Ranger X]

You missed the point. What he's saying is instead of setting the price at 50 and having people wait until a price drop (because we've all done that), instead sell the game for what its worth from the beginning. So -- let's say they turn a profit on wiisports at 15 dollars and they sell it at 50 -- no one is going to buy it until it comes down. instead, they set the price at 25-30 and its more reasonable. except this would apply to all games.

unless of course i missed the point too then someone correct me.

Actually Iwata's point what more about the need to have different price points at the start and not that the prices should ever go down. The only thing he said about that is that they go down too fast. A bit later he said that the games should obviously go down in price later.
This thread is a bit misleading.

 

[Razoric]

Actually Iwata's point what more about the need to have different price points at the start and not that the prices should ever go down. The only thing he said about that is that they go down too fast. A bit later he said that the games should obviously go down in price later.
This thread is a bit misleading.

Yeah I just re-read what he was saying.... knee-jerk reactions ftl.

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

I like my cheap software thank you. Its the only way i can achieve the standard of living I have as a gamer.lol

 

[Ranger X]

Yeah I just re-read what he was saying.... GAF reactions ftl.

Fixed
(so there's even more people that will understand you statement)

 

[GitarooMan]

they should be making it so you have insentive to buy it right out the gate, similar to how movies have special price setups on the week of release...

I actually think that is a good system because it spurs people to buy immediately, but I would guess it's more retailer driven. I wish more would go with the Fry's model of agressive pricing games in the first week, I know I would buy more games early if I had a Fry's around here. I guess most retailers don't think the loss of margin is made up for by the increased sales.

 

[cvxfreak]

Iwata is referring to the Japanese market, where price cuts are more severe and more common and there are indeed bargain bins of relatively new games.

Yes. Nintendo made themselves more flexible for retailers in 2004 by dropping the prices of their games by 5% when after-tax pricing was required by the Japanese government. So their games nowadays, MSRP-wise, are 6800, 5800, 4800, 3800, 2800 and 2000 Yen accordingly. Not 6980, 6080, 5040, 2100, and so forth.

And Nintendo did it again by charging 5800 Yen on most of their recent GC games, which is 1000+ Yen cheaper than the average MSRP.

 

[Ghengis Cohen]

I always spend full price on the games I really want, and I love supporting developers (as I am one) but it is the height of arrogance to assume that all games should be priced high for a long time after their release because people simply will not buy them and the only companies that will survive are the ones that already have massive front loaded sales, like Nintendo. if it wasn't for retailers lowering prices I wouldn't have nearly the collection I do and wouldn't have played and enjoyed many of the games have because I simply do not have the money to purchase all those games brand new. So yes, like Belfast said, support developers but also realize that many developers would be simply swept under the rug if it weren't for a competitive pricing structure.

 

[dlobro1080]

Iwata is right in that there is a problem with games decreasing in value too quickly, but the solution isn't just to keep old titles at the same exorbitant prices they were released at, but to actually release them in the first place at a more reasonable cost. Although, to be honest, I don't think the problem he's talking about (games decreasing in value so quickly) will really be solved until we reach a technological plateau in which old games won't look as immediately inferior to new games, which won't really happen for a couple of decades yet.



It's true of other industries, of course, but not to the exponential scale that you see in the gaming industry. The point is that a film or album made in 1995 is essentially indistinguishable to one made today in terms of quality; the perceived worth of The Usual Suspects is the same as it was then, as is that of MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana. The mere use of Ridge Racer as promotional material in a modern gaming press conference, however, is laughed at to the point of becoming an internet meme. Take discussion on this board of Nintendo's Virtual Console as an example, and you'll see an awful lot of comments to the effect that people won't pay more that $5 for a NES or SNES game. With prices of those games up to $60 new, and new DVDs going for $30 (say), that's equivalent to someone saying they won't buy a film made in 1990 for more than $2.50, which quite obviously doesn't happen.

Great points! Videogames are a strange beast, in that they're the only form of entertainment or art that people GENERALLY don't revisit after enjoying the first time. Albums will be played over and over. Movies will be rewatched. Paintings hung on the wall for years. But who - excpet maybe the hardcore nerds here, myself included - will replay a videogame from start to finish? I think that dynamic also effects the problematic pricing of videogames.

 

[ronito]

The solution is simple. You want to sell your games for $50 then make games that are worth $50. I payed $90 for FFVI and still to this day think it was well worth it. I'll pay $50 for FFXI, and Zelda: TP. I wont begrudge that at all.

The market will tend to level itself. Again if every game was worth $50 then no problem but most games are not. But he's missing out in the fact that certain games will sell better the cheaper they are. Would I pay $50 for Prince of Persia? Absolutely not. Would I buy it for $19? You bet. You can't have it both ways Mr. Iwata.

 

[DSN2K]

as a partime analysis here on neoGAF I agree with him...

but as a gamer he can piss off! :lol

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

Why don't you people just man up and pay the price for the pasttime that you enjoy? Sure, I'll take advantage of price drops when they're there, but I'm not going to bother waiting when I really want to play a game just to save a few bucks. Too many of you have a tight clutch on your wallet, afraid to show a little monetary appreciation to the people who make the games you play.

This is part of the reason I buy games the first day. People don't know that but as far as sequels and such, a lot is predicated on first month sales. I love gaming. Yeah, I'll serve up $60 for a game that might not really deserve it, but if it's better for the industry, sometimes you have to bite the bullet, that is what I do.

 

[Link316]

note to Iwata: price fixing is illegal

 

[Remedy]

what i wouldnt mind is if some of the money that goes to second hand games went back to the developers, rather then into the big bags of game stores.

 

[DaCocoBrova]

The games aren't getting better (IMO), they cost more... Couple that w/ the increase in nex gen gaming hardware and gas prices...

That's not a good combination.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

You might as well say the same thing about hardware, and Nintendo certainly isn't against dropping prices on that every 6 or 9 months. By his theory, wouldn't consumers all learn to just wait for the price to drop on that as well?

Well, you could say that with N64 and GCN, they made the initial price equal to the "price drop" price of the competition.

 

[DDayton]

I'm confused... when I read the article, it sounded like Iwata was saying that games should be fairly priced to begin with so that they wouldn't rapidly drop in price a few months later. The rapid price drop model leads to fewer sales, as more and more gamers opt to wait for the expected price drop. If games are priced reasonably to begin with, you shouldn't have a price drop all that soon, and more folks will buy the game as they won't be expecting a price drop.

 

[Striek]

Nintendos system of pricing sucks, here at least. The most expensive first-party by far, and they never seem to drop the price on any of their software. So, well, I hope they at least take the step to price the software reasonably, even if they don't agree with price reductions.

The rapid price drop model leads to fewer sales

Eh, thats probably true for most software, but not all. God of War is a shining example. I doubt it would've done 1M+ if it hadn't had the exposure at $50 and then additional exposure when it went to greatest hits.

But besides that, is there any reason to believe that the revenue for the publishers is going to be greater with more sales at a low price point vs. less sales at a high price point? For most (non-budget) games I'd argue no.

 

[cvxfreak]

I'm confused... when I read the article, it sounded like Iwata was saying that games should be fairly priced to begin with so that they wouldn't rapidly drop in price a few months later. The rapid price drop model leads to fewer sales, as more and more gamers opt to wait for the expected price drop. If games are priced reasonably to begin with, you shouldn't have a price drop all that soon, and more folks will buy the game as they won't be expecting a price drop.

That's what I was indicating earlier. Nintendo sells their games, on average, cheaper in Japan than a new release for other companies. At the very least 5% cheaper, if not more.

Games like Mario Tennis, Paper Mario, Mario Party 6/7, Pokemon XD and Chibi Robo were 5800 Yen AFTER tax. The only offset is that they don't drop in price as dramatically - but it fits with Iwata's policy. Nintendo priced the games fairly the first time around and thus, they don't experience dramatic price drops as often as other games. There are Japanese Nintendo games that hit the bargain bin (like Ouendan and Zelda 4 Swords+), but in my experience, the bigger hits don't.

 

[kablooey]

Iwata is right in that there is a problem with games decreasing in value too quickly, but the solution isn't just to keep old titles at the same exorbitant prices they were released at, but to actually release them in the first place at a more reasonable cost. Although, to be honest, I don't think the problem he's talking about (games decreasing in value so quickly) will really be solved until we reach a technological plateau in which old games won't look as immediately inferior to new games, which won't really happen for a couple of decades yet.

It's true of other industries, of course, but not to the exponential scale that you see in the gaming industry. The point is that a film or album made in 1995 is essentially indistinguishable to one made today in terms of quality; the perceived worth of The Usual Suspects is the same as it was then, as is that of MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana. The mere use of Ridge Racer as promotional material in a modern gaming press conference, however, is laughed at to the point of becoming an internet meme. Take discussion on this board of Nintendo's Virtual Console as an example, and you'll see an awful lot of comments to the effect that people won't pay more that $5 for a NES or SNES game. With prices of those games up to $60 new, and new DVDs going for $30 (say), that's equivalent to someone saying they won't buy a film made in 1990 for more than $2.50, which quite obviously doesn't happen.

Good points, I agree with most of what you said, especially about games being released at more affordable levels initially. I think though, that for games within the same generation, maintaining a price level shouldn't be as difficult as it would be across generations, as with the SNES/NES/PS games you noted. Is Halo really that much worse looking than Halo 2? Not really, that game could've easily pulled close to full price near the end of the generational cycle.

So in that regard, I agree that Iwata makes some sense.

 

[TheGreatDave]

From what Iwata is saying, I'm expecting Nintendo to release more software at a lower-than-usual price.

Works for me.

 

[Gattsu25]

I remember back in 2001 thinking: Should I buy Mario 64 or Onimusha? They're both the same price. . .

I also remember thinking: $25 for a single NES game port on a handheld?


Nintendo can take a hike with their pricing

 

[Mr_Furious]

Nintendo will always criticize the market they can't control. Nintendo doesn't do pricedrops on the vast majority of their line unless it reaches PC status and even that takes years so obviously they're complaining about what the rest of the industry trends are.

Make video games affordable, PERIOD! $50-$60 games cannot be the wave of the future and sales will surely prove this over time. Overall, game prices need to come down because the entertainment value isn't adding up to the cost. Give it a couple years and when overall sw/hw sales are declining, the industry will (hopefully) react accordingly by making prices more attractive.

 

[Bowen_B]

Why don't you people just man up and pay the price for the pasttime that you enjoy? Sure, I'll take advantage of price drops when they're there, but I'm not going to bother waiting when I really want to play a game just to save a few bucks. Too many of you have a tight clutch on your wallet, afraid to show a little monetary appreciation to the people who make the games you play.

This is all well and good for those in North America but if you expect me to go down the shop, wait 4 months then pay 4 times the price you've got to be kidding!
(In 4 months (average PAL conversion time) a game can drop to like $15 which is about 10 quid, a new game is 40 quid)
The alternative being to just import on release day online from America and get it delivered for less than new.

 

[DjangoReinhardt]

Why don't you people just man up and pay the price for the pasttime that you enjoy? Sure, I'll take advantage of price drops when they're there, but I'm not going to bother waiting when I really want to play a game just to save a few bucks. Too many of you have a tight clutch on your wallet, afraid to show a little monetary appreciation to the people who make the games you play.

As long as the publishers make their books available to me so I can verify that the MSRP is justified. Dynamic pricing and profit ceilings FTW.

 

[Pakkidis]

You see the problem is I live in Canada, and prices here aren't exactly cheap ESPECIALLY Nintendo games. New games can go for 70$ with tax. Now before anybody starts talking about currency exchange, don't bother, even with it we still pay a bit more. I hear Europe gets it really hard when it comes to pricing.

I have waited, and waited for prices too drop, and it takes a good solid year+ before any significant price drop occurs with Nintendo games. Third party titles are a different matter but still. In order for me to buy games when they are first released they MUST be priced no more than 35$. Thats my magic number.

 

[Jiggy]

Make video games affordable, PERIOD! $50-$60 games cannot be the wave of the future and sales will surely prove this over time.

But they've been $50-60 since the beginning...

 

[Adam Blade]

The solution is simple. You want to sell your games for $50 then make games that are worth $50. I payed $90 for FFVI and still to this day think it was well worth it. I'll pay $50 for FFXI, and Zelda: TP. I wont begrudge that at all.

what

 

[kablooey]

I payed $90 for FFVI .

My sincere condolences.

 

[Mr_Furious]

But they've been $50-60 since the beginning...

And if this industry expects to continue to thrive and expand, it needs to rethink their price points. At one point Sony reduced the price point of their internally developed games to $40 (and even that's been inconsistent) but it still proves to me that someone is paying attention to the price vs entertainment value crisis that most games face. If overall, games were $20-$30 (w/ the occasional LE being more), an increase in not only sales but also interest could result. But that's an expensive risk a greedy industry doesn't want to take it seems.

 

[Azelover]

Way to take things out of context, he wasn't slamming anything. His proposal is that games should have their prices determined at the beginning and those prices should stick with the product, otherwise you'll reach a point where people will become interested in a game and wait 9 months to buy it, but by the time their wait is over they might be onto other things and end up overlooking the game. It's a concern of his from 2002, doesn't mean Nintendo's gonna adopt it across the board. You saw it with Brain Training, it's out for a year in Japan and there hasn't been a price drop, it doesn't need it because the pricing was appropriate enough to begin with.

 

[ronito]

what

curses! XII I mean XII

 

[puck1337]

Actually Iwata's point what more about the need to have different price points at the start and not that the prices should ever go down. The only thing he said about that is that they go down too fast. A bit later he said that the games should obviously go down in price later.
This thread is a bit misleading.

Ding ding ding!

 

[Deku]

as a partime analysis here on neoGAF I agree with him...

but as a gamer he can piss off! :lol

When the Part Time Analyst II postion open up ?

 

[Tabris]

and you guys want Nintendo back as #1?We can all pay 59.99-69.99 for games again, which don't go down in price for like 2 years than go "player's choice" for like 29.99

I rather pay 500 bucks for my systems (ps3, 360) and pay 49.99 for new games and like 19.99 for 6 month old games Save money in the long run by a ton.

 

[Tyrone Slothrop]

he's got a point. i mean all us broke-de-brokes here have caught on ... and i know joe consumer will after he's shelling out $60+ for his ps3/360 games. its good for us but bad for the industry

though how anybody can cajole retailers into sticking to one price is a moot point. and there's always used copies

 

[Deku]

and you guys want Nintendo back as #1?We can all pay 59.99-69.99 for games again, which don't go down in price for like 2 years than go "player's choice" for like 29.99

I rather pay 500 bucks for my systems (ps3, 360) and pay 49.99 for new games and like 19.99 for 6 month old games Save money in the long run by a ton.

That's not being honest You're justifying the new expected price points of the coming generation then applying the old pricing model for budget games.

I think PS3 games will start more expensive and stay more expensive even after they have been re-released. Otherwise there will be a giant gap between new release prices and budget /GreatestHit prices which will encourage consumers to put off buying new games. This is not what publishers want.

Pricing as a holistic strategy tend to move together. if you set your upper limit game prices higher, so will your lower limit prices go higher.

As i've said in another thread, the battle in the next 12 months is who get to set the standard in this industry as the price leader for the games. Their pricing model will become the measuring stick.

As for Iwata's comments, most of the responses to what he has to say have been off the mark.

 

[VultureDude]

Chibirobo is not and was never worth fifty dollars and does not deserve to sit on the shelf selling for fifty bucks for 12 months. If should have debuted at a buget(ish) price

Nintend-self-freaking-owned

 

[Pachinko]

Doesn't this cut out quote basically just mean that games which get overproduced should have lower prices when they enter the market so they'll sell out faster ? like if 500K copies of Mario's teabagging adventure get pressed and only 100K sell over 3 months and it takes 9 months at a lower price to sell the other 400 K then perhaps they should only make 100K at full price or 300K at 10 dollars less. That sort of thing.

The man does have a point there , I mean sometimes I just wait for the price on a game to drop if I know I can find it in 6 months and I won't play it that much. Games should have a shelf life of 1 year, if they can't sell out in that length of time they made too many of them.


On a side note I'm pissed mario advance 4, mario 3, is still full price on GBA. I refuse to pay 45 canadian for it. It's been like 2 years since it released too.

 

[Spike]

I rather pay 500 bucks for my systems (ps3, 360) and pay 49.99 for new games and like 19.99 for 6 month old games Save money in the long run by a ton.

Do you honestly believe that these games are going to drop down to $20 this gen? I'm thinking that the Greatest Hits/Platinum Hits line will go for $30 US this gen. I mean, they're trying to justify a $10 increase on new games now, so why should they lose that additional $10 when they move it over to budget pricing?

And let's be honest here. Iwata may have a point on pricing a game accordingly right out of the gate. But, who honestly believes that third parties would adhere to such a standard? Look at sports games. You are basically paying full price for an updated roster every year. Sure, they might add a new feature or two, but does that really justify full price? Do you think that EA, with the NFL exclusive license, is going to offer Madded 2007 for less than full price? Just think of the $$$ they would lose. Not going to happen.

 

[Tyrone Slothrop]

like if 500K copies of Mario's teabagging adventure get pressed and only 100K sell over 3 months ...

:lol

 

[BudokaiMR2]

Haha this is so funny.

This is from a business perspective as the PRESIDENT OF NINTENDO. Of course he is right. It is totally true.

But from the point of view of lowly Message board scouring Gamers? **** yeah he's wrong, but thats just cuz we are greedy...

 

[gutter_trash]

i'm loving the price drops on PS2 and Xbox games... average games like Godfather getting chopped prices after 2 months = great.. ........ I wouldn't pay full price for it,, but for budget bargain bin price? yeah! why not

 

[loosus]

This is the exact mentality that has prevented me from buying games like Geist and Batallion Wars.

Sure, it's probably unwise to have an exact price-reduction schedule for all games, but if the games obviously aren't going to sell (or worse, it's been six months since its release and it still hasn't passed the 100,000 mark), why the hell would you NOT reduce the price? Rather than getting $20 or $30 from people, Nintendo's basically getting nothing because most people can easily exercise enough self-restraint not to buy crap titles for $40 or $50.

 

[Kobun Heat]

Man, I could do a whole column on this. And maybe I will! But -- just as a little present to say I love you -- here's the abridged version.

Imagine a typical American video game company. For the Christmas season they have five games. Each of these was developed on a similarly large budget and will debut at full price. The company knows full well that there is no way that all five of these games will become hits and make their money back. What they're betting on is that the games that do succeed will pay for the ones that fail. Remember the statistics about "only x% of games make money"?

So they shove all the games out the door at $50. Sure enough, four of them tank. Retailers are stuck with lots of unsold stock, and the price is lowered across the board to $20 for all these games.

Iwata isn't suggesting price fixing. He's saying that the business plan is flawed. Rather than let 10% of games subsidize the other 90%, he's suggesting that publishers endeavor to make sure that every game they develop is designed from the get-go to fit into its own sustainable price point, rather than just releasing everything at $50 and slashing prices on the ones that don't move.

 

[Tarazet]

If I really want a game, regardless of whether I think it will be discounted, I will pay retail for it. Just within recent memory, I have bought Grandia III, Suikoden V, Monster Rancher Evo, Jaws Unleashed, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Break-Em-All, Meteos, and Pokemon Emerald at full retail price. All of these were games that genuinely interested me, and the market is pretty much with me - I haven't seen price drops for any of these games recently (though the first 3 ultimately turned out to be stinkers, and seem to be suffering in the marketplace).

The solution for developers, of course, is to make more of the games I want.

 

[sc0la]

This isn't a bad policy if more games were priced according to their relative value. I would not have purchased brain age if it were not $20.

The more they learn not every game needs to be $50 the more likely I am to buy games closer to launch. I don't finish all the games I buy now as it is. There is generally zero incentive for me, the consumer, to purchase early unles it is a new zelda or has a bomb ass pre-order bonus

 

[eudaemonic]

Just playing devil's advocate here...