Do you abstain from paying $60 for PC games?

Ever since digital distribution became more mainstream, I've started to get a lot tighter with my cash. Local games usually have a 50%+ premium compared to US prices, so I almost never buy a local game these days.

Increasingly, I start to find myself buying digital games on sale and holding off new releases. It isn't because I can't afford it, but more that I don't value games as much these days due to quality. Dragon Age 2 is the perfect example of something I'm not going to rush out and buy.
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2010
Messages
286
Location
Australia
Well, I paid $90 for DA 2 Sig Ed. and that's one of the cheaper games I've bought here. Most have been $100-120!! Someone is making a LOT of money.
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
12,816
Location
Australia
I have so little time for gaming nowadays that I tend to 1) discover interesting games years after release and 2) buy them in the bargain bin for 10 €.
The last game I paid the full price for was C&C 4, that was around 40€ and somewhat disappointing, and I discovered it only because it lay close to the bargain bin. The last game I thoroughly enjoyed was Nehrim which was free and took me about 70 hours to finish (main quest only), and the last game I bought was the first LEGO Star Wars, PS2 version, used, for 10 €, to play with sonny.

If a game came out I absolutely wanted I'd pay the full price, of course, but those games became rarer as the years went by. I'd make this exception for the next TES and Thief games, but that's pretty much it. Money's a bit tight to go around buying full-priced games I don't even have the time to play.

Ah yes, and I don't make a distinction between cRPGs and other games here.
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
3,754
It actually depends on the game for me. I'd buy a new Civilization game no matter the price, for example. But I don't spend more than a few bucks on shooters or racing games. I buy most RPGs for their full price except when the I don't think I like that game at all or when I really don't have any time to play.
 
Joined
Oct 24, 2006
Messages
465
Location
Saarbruecken
I have bought games from Black Isle, Bioware, Obsidian and Troika games at launch day in ages, up to Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age 2.
 
Joined
Oct 26, 2006
Messages
6,027
Reading comments around here makes me envious :p In my country stores keep the same prices for games over the years... COD 4 for ex is more than 60$ here... and that game came out in 2007... There is no marketing strategy for video-games here and at this rate there will never be one. Merchants prefer to keep the game on sale with the same price years in a row rather than dropping the prices and selling it fast.

Well at least oldies are at a reasonable price (if you can find them).
 
Joined
Aug 7, 2010
Messages
489
Location
Vivec, Morrowind
I don't think I would even notice if the price for a new game varied +/- $10. More than that, I would probably take note and consider whether or not the game was worth that much. If I thought it was, I would still buy it.

For me, and most people in the western world (I guess), $10 really isn't much. I burn $10 all the time on various stuff.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
453
I do. Everything else in the world goes up in costs so I expect games to as well. They kept pretty static for ages and I wonder if that is why we have games that need to have mass appeal now.

Anyhow it costs me about $50-$60 a week just to fill up my truck with gas. I certainly don't quibble over paying that for a game.
 
Joined
Jun 4, 2008
Messages
3,967
Location
NH
Hardly ever will I pay the going rate for a brand new game. Mainly because games these days rarely excite me. Very seldom do I buy any game that is brand new, its usually at least a year later before I buy a game. Sometimes its many years later, for example, I have been looking into getting Morrowind recently. There are several perks to this general method, you get a game fully patched, and all the expansions come with it for a bargain price.

The last game I bought brand new, and it was actually more expensive than $60 (I forget exact price), was the Steam deluxe edition of Dragon Age Origins. The only reason was I bought the hype that it was a return to the glory days of Baldur's Gate style games. While it didn't come close to scaling those heights, I feel it was a worthwhile purchase. I am extremely thorough when it comes to playing rpgs, and I racked up 140 hours in play time and still had a good chunk of the game to go when my computer crashed permanently due to motherboard failure. So I definitely feel my money was well spent on that game.

If a game really excited me, whether old school rpg or an interesting first person shooter (the other genre besides rpgs that I quite enjoy), its possible I wouldn't wait to buy it. But like I said that is quite rare indeed, especially these days.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
2,246
Location
Pacific NorthWest, USA!
During the 90's price of PC games rose constantly in my country up to worth close to about 100$ and I don't count the relative value because 1$ was worth more than today.

And very suddenly it drop down, probably in one or two years, new release price drop down to about 60$ and even a bit bellow. Since then price of new releases didn't change much, but seems have slowly increase the last two years. But DA2 standard edition was at 55$ and SE at 67$, well it was like 2/3 days after release and perhaps that was already sort of sale but not highlighted as sale in the shop.

Cince a long time box version tend be quite cheaper package than during the first half of 90's but even at this time standard edition box started not be so noteworthy apart for few exceptions or collector editions.

But digital new release prices are too high for me. I feel there's a service from shops like gamersgate or steam but still I tend wait some sales before to buy most games that I buy digital. For RPG, the last digital I bought was DAO because I was quite irritated that EA didn't released a box collector version for my country. And in fact I bought it because it was a Mac release. Well later I also bought the PC version so I end paying it quite a lot for digital only but that's another matter.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
3,258
I have so far, but it's not been the $60 that's stopped me from purchasing those games. For the most part, I wouldn't buy them for $1. I've made my feelings clear on why I refuse to purchase them, so I won't beat that dead horse into gelatin here.

Since my gaming purchases are 90% indie titles now, I typically don't find anything at $60. On the plus side, since I don't often buy the mainstream publishers' titles, I don't often buy complete and utter garbage like I did when I was buying games on name/dev alone.

On the other hand, the indies make it hard to choose sometimes; I'm currently debating which game to get to tide me over until Eschalon book 3 comes out. That alone stops me from buying most at launch, though I bought E:B2 the day it came out.
 
Joined
Jun 28, 2007
Messages
2,744
Location
In the Middle of Nowhere
Like most, I think it depends on the game.

Right now I can see possibly paying $60 for Witcher 2, the new Deus Ex, Rage, LA Noire, Skyrim, and maybe the new Batman & Duke Nukem games. I'll probably buy all of those blindly (as in pre-order) except Deus Ex & the last 2 (gonna have to read some opinions on them first).

So $60 is not a bad price to me. I almost never buy games new/full price anyway. A linear on rails shooter around 8-10 hours = $20-30 game to me.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
461
I usually order games from UK online shops.
Paid 26 pounds for DA2 Signature edition including shipping. Pre-ordered Witcher 2 Premium edition for 26 pounds and DX: Human Revolution Augmented Edition for 33 pounds including shipping. Seems like reasonable prices for me. If you wait couple of months you can usually get them at half that price. Found Fallout New Vegas CE for 20 pound just a month after release.
 
Joined
Jun 13, 2007
Messages
693
Location
Forgotten Realms
No, and it was a long time since new games were that cheap here (though it should be noted that games are a lot more expensive on this side of the Atlantic and Sweden is expensive by European standards). There are other reasons than price for me not buying new games. My problem is that the genres I like are plagued with

a) buggy initial releases that needs patching up
b) DLC (I tend to finish a game relatively soon after purchase, and I am NOT restarting a game where I have to go through tonnes of filler combat to to play through some DLC)

And since I have enough to do to fill my spare time I wait for some sort of "complete" package with bugs ironed out and DLC included.

I might buy titles from devs who have a history of avoiding both a) and b), and my cutoff point would probably be around SEK 500 (about $80). I would gladly have paid that much for complete editions of Bioware games or Fallout 3 with expansions. Risen and The Witcher would also easily gave me $80 worth of entertainment, even if I bought both games at bargain bin prices due to lacking hardware at the time of their release.

New games in Sweden go for $111.

I had to check if games actually are sold at that ridiculous price, and apparently some are! Luckily most of the very expensive games are of little interest to me.

Not all new games have that price tag though:) Pricerunner lists the PC version of Dragon Age 2 at SEK349-499, roughly $55-80, but I guess it might have been a few tenners more expensive on release.
 
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
2,013
Yep, I definitely remember paying $60-$70 for games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3 for the SNES. In fact, the original Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System was around $70 when it was first released.

For me, it depends a lot on the genre. I have no problem paying $60+ for a decent RPG. On the other hand, a pure shooter would have to be exceptional for me to pay that much.

Phantasy Star's retail price was $69 but some places sold it for more. I worked after-school at a small electronics store where it sold for $74 and I got it at discount for like $45 or something like that, hehe.

I hardly pay full retail for games anymore - just can't justify paying $60 for something I may not even play much aside from trying it out. I just have such a long backlog that I'll buy a game at release for $60 and then not play it for another 6 months or so and by then it's already $39 or less.

So I usually wait or stuff to go on sale or hit the bargain bin, unless it's something by Atlus (always love their RPGs and they tend to disappear faster than other games from the retail shelves) or unless it's something I was really anticipating. Was that way with Final Fantasy games but didn't get FFXIII until 8 months later (on sale for $20) due to all the negative press.

And that's for console games - for PC games it's just better to wait a few months for those release sales that Steam or Stardock have. Unless it's something I must really have a physical copy of and those games are getting rarer and rarer. May as well download if I'm not getting a nice fat manual, map or other physical goodies (and I had a completely different attitude towards digital media just a year ago).
 
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
775
Location
NYC
If a game came out I absolutely wanted I'd pay the full price, of course, but those games became rarer as the years went by.

I'm with Jaz opinion-wise, more or less. Rather more.

I become more and more picky these days, and I almost only buy budget-priced games, not full price ones.

The pro of that is that budget-priced games often come full patched. And in rare cases even without a proper copy protection (depebnds on the distributor/maker/publisher of the game).

The last full-priced gamne I bought was the Personal Edition of Drakensang 2. And that's a thing I'll never give away, except for a museum. ;)
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,937
Location
Old Europe
Price is pretty irrelevant to me (within reason). My time is worth a lot. I'm happy to pay $60 for a game that is worth my time and, likewise, I don't care how cheap a mediocre game is - I have better things to do.
This.

Well, in theory. In practice, Steam keeps piling up deals that keep tempting me to buy games. If money really were no object, that shouldn't happen.
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,249
Location
Kansas City
i roll in money.

i bathe in money.

i eat money.

i can buy what i want
 
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
315
Location
Virgin Islands
Here in Germany, we have a proverb : "Geld stinkt nicht" = "Money doesn't stink".

Sorry, but I couldn't resist on that. ;)

But on the other hand ... Do the money coins taste good as your daily meal ? With what do you "spice them up" ?
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,937
Location
Old Europe
Back
Top Bottom