It's long been the opinion of the staff at Outcyders that games are simply too expensive. While the cost of making a game has spiralled recently (most games now cost several million to put together), after going through a slight lull, the cost to the customer has been steadily increasing as well. Ask the publishers, and they'll say the higher RRPs are to offset the higher costs of development. But of course, people only have a limited amount of money to spend. If the games are expensive, they can only buy one or two a year - which means much greater competition, and plenty of great games going unnoticed at the retail end of the spectrum. But if they were cheaper, more people would be able to buy more games - and with a cheaper RRP, there'd be less of a reason for people to turn to the pre-owned market to boot.
As the games industry's quickly finding out - if people can't afford the games, they won't be satisfied just going without. Instead, piracy is becoming rampant amongst all formats - especially on the DS, where having a special "pirate" card, which let you run games you've downloaded from the internet, seems to almost be a must for most people.
No, not this sort of pirate.
Luckily, however, it looks like we're not alone in our opinions, as respected UK developer, Charles Cecil - who bought us Beneath a Steel Sky, and the Broken Sword franchise (for fans of point and click games), has been quoted in an interview with trade website MCV as saying that games simply cost too much.
"Personally, I think that the level of piracy we have is nature's way of turning around and saying games are too expensive and the way that they are distributed is not ideal."
"Yes, we can pressure internet service providers and take any number of anti-piracy measures. But ultimately iTunes has shown that if you make the means of distribution easy and the price compelling, you will build the respect of your audience."
"And while this won't eradicate piracy completely, it won't become such a serious issue anymore."
And while we're not exactly looking forward to the day that downloads take over from disk based games altogether (it's always nice to have something physical, isn't it), the industry in general could do with taking heed of Charles' words.Lower prices could solve a lot of the industry's problems in one fell swoop.
