?30 is now a 'Budget Price'!

[Baseley09]

Budget Price? Wasn't that the term used in the hey-day of the Spectrum games, where they were ?1.99 and ?2.99 a pop, with "full-price" games starting at ?8.99 upwards.

?30 is not a budget price.

Damn straight, the likes of Fernandez Must Die & Starquake were about ?2.99 and were near the best meoney could buy

[EJG1980]

Damn straight, the likes of Fernandez Must Die & Starquake were about ?2.99 and were near the best meoney could buy

Ohhh, Starquake was superb!!! First ever game I played on a PC (which was a 286 office PC that my Dad had brought home from work )

[muse hunter]

n64 had a ?30 'budget range' but then againg carts were much more expensive so today they have no excuses

[rumbletum]

Budget Price? Wasn't that the term used in the hey-day of the Spectrum games, where they were ?1.99 and ?2.99 a pop, with "full-price" games starting at ?8.99 upwards.

?30 is not a budget price.

Bah, I remember when full price was ?5-?6, then bloody Ultimate seemed to start the ball rolling with a ?9-?10 price point.

It were all fields round here then too

[Vince]

?30 was budget back during the 16bit cart days when most new releases were ?49.99.

Yeh thats true but carts are pretty and we didn't have loading times back then.

[NekoFever]

They use the excuse of development costs to bump the price up to ?50 every generation even if it is bull****. We see it every generation and they'll settle on the standard ?40 before too long so I don't know why people seem so surprised every time it happens. The PS3 will be the same, as will the Xbox 720 and PS4 or whatever they end up calling them.

It's blatantly nothing more than an excuse to get an extra cash injection to pay for the costs (which do exist to some extent) of shifting everyone from one console to another.

But yeah, ?30 might be cheaper than normal but it's not budget. Considering the amount of content that the reviews say this game has it might even have been a Live Arcade game that got too big for download.

EDIT: You can thank Microsoft for the price:

Though at the Microsoft-mandated "budget" price of $39.99 -- the cheapest Xbox 360 games can be sold -- there are issues of value and staying power.

[Paleface]

That's the thing - it's an RRP. The RRP on most current-gen titles is still, I believe, ?39.99 - the fact the stores sell games for ?35, ?32 or ?30 is up to them. They shave profit margins to win back on sales, and the mail-order people do it more so.

So for a game to come out the gate at 60% of the traditional RRP... yep, that's _definitely_ budget, unfortunately.

The problem is not with the definition of 'budget', it's the fact that non-budget 360 titles are ?50. I don't think it's fair to decry ?30 as "not budget" without criticising the ?50 standard price. CF: ?40/?20 for Platinum, and you can now find Platinum titles for about ?15.

[Akira]

360 games are £39.99 from gameplay and table tennis is £24.99.That to me is a discount price.

[Leon Retro]

The word ' budget ' shouldn't be used in this case. It's not the right term to describe a ?30 game. Back in 99 when the PS1 was amazingly popular, Driver and other new games were being sold at ?29.99 ( full price )

The PC market shows what gaming prices should be about. Most games cost ?25 or less, even big name titles. You can buy stuff like Trackmania Sunrise at ?20 or less upon release, and these are top quality products. You then have budget stuff, which is ?5-10, and some are still brilliant games.

We all know ?50 is a joke, and that retailers have dropped the price to ?40. I would say ?20 for a console game sounds about right to label it ' budget '

I often buy top rate practically mint PC games, that are only around 6-12 months old for a fiver off ebay. That is what I call a bargain!

It seems to me that most people feel ?30 is the right price for new games, and I agree!

[Paleface]

No, you've missed the point. "Budget" isn't terminology applied by the retailer. It's applied by the publisher, and by the mothership.

Games selling for ?30 in 1999 - three years into the PS1's lifespan - were being sold for ?10 under RRP. That was a decision by the retailers, to ignore the price suggested by the publisher.

"Budget" isn't an absolute term - referring to what price games are sold out; it's a term relative to the RRP for a "full price" title. Like I said, it's not about what the "cheaper" price is, but what it's reduced from.

This is also before you consider inflation, and that your 1999 ?30 title costs more at today's exchange rates.

[NekoFever]

360 games are ?39.99 from gameplay and table tennis is ?24.99.That to me is a discount price.

Yes, "discount". Not "budget".

[MattyD]

The PC market shows what gaming prices should be about. Most games cost ?25 or less, even big name titles. You can buy stuff like Trackmania Sunrise at ?20 or less upon release, and these are top quality products. You then have budget stuff, which is ?5-10, and some are still brilliant games.

In an ideal world yes, but the extra fiver is how the hardware companies make all their money. I don't object to this business model in principle, but the costs of the next-gen is so ridiculous that it distorts this price increase out of all proportion.

End of the day, if these new machines cost so much to us, you can bet they cost a lot more to the manufacturers, and this is obviously how they intend to recoup the money. If we're willing to put up with that, more fool us.

[NekoFever]

The question is whether we'd prefer that they recoup their costs on software like they do or they actually made a profit on the hardware. The outcry over the PS3 price, which even at ?425 will be well below cost, suggests that people aren't going to be happy either way. Would we rather pay, say, ?1,000 for a console and then get ?20 games?

[MattyD]

Ifyou follow this argument to its natural conclusion you get... Nintendo's new direction. Or something like it, at any rate.

People will only pay so much, after all.

[Leon Retro]

No, you've missed the point. "Budget" isn't terminology applied by the retailer. It's applied by the publisher, and by the mothership.

Games selling for ?30 in 1999 - three years into the PS1's lifespan - were being sold for ?10 under RRP. That was a decision by the retailers, to ignore the price suggested by the publisher.

"Budget" isn't an absolute term - referring to what price games are sold out; it's a term relative to the RRP for a "full price" title. Like I said, it's not about what the "cheaper" price is, but what it's reduced from.

This is also before you consider inflation, and that your 1999 ?30 title costs more at today's exchange rates.

The fact is when Virgin dropped the PS1 games price to ?29.99, people went crazy and couldn't get enough. Games like Driver at the time, sold amazingly well, and really boosted the industries profile and user base.

The only reason games are so expensive right now is simply because of hype from the publishers etc... They say the games are worth more, and suggest a retail price of ?50. When the machines become more popular and get into the 2nd or 3rd generation of games, the price touted by the publishers will probably be less, as is usuallly the case.

I think MS, Sony and Nintendo have a lot of influence over the way publishers and retailers price their games. It's not a free market like the PC. Console game prices are tightly controlled by the console makers. If Sony release their first-party titles at ?30, that will become the standard price across the board.

It proves that console makers not only want premium prices for their machines, but also as much as possible from their games. They are very shrewd, and they know that whatever the intial pricing, early adopters are usually videogame fans who can't resist the machines and games, despite the extravagant pricing.

Casuals who get in on the action in the second or third wave are always going to pay less. Loyal, dedicated videogame games always get taken advantage of, and that's why some people, even the most avid games fans, are now saying they will wait rather than feel like mugs!