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Nintendo to make games 29.99?
- Thread starter Bishman
- Start date
ravingloon
Member
SantaCruZer said:are they in desperate mode already?
I'm all for it. It'd force the others to also react and the industry would get the kick in the pants it needs. I don't care about history. The market, today, would do a lot better if games weren't priced so high (Just think of the effect it would have on the used market and the increase in impulse buying). I can't see Nintendo having the vision for this, but hopefully one day one of the major companies will.
StrikerObi
Member
$30, no way. Maybe they will smart up and follow suit with Sony and make their first party titles $40... maybe.
open_mouth_
insert_foot_
NINTENDO: "GAMERS ARE OUR #1 PRIORITAY!"
Mr. Iwata, a long while ago, talked about how this might be forced on the industry (due to competition) and he didn't like it...BUT...There's been lot's of companies who've thought about reaching the budget price. Seriously...let's put this to some logic. If a company makes a game for $50 then they're making more profit per game...BUT...if they're selling them at $30 then they're reaching more buyers' budgets. The possibility of selling more copies of the game are also increased which keeps profits up *and* makes sales of the game look better which helps in the image department. As sequels, spin-off's and anual games go (who pretty much use the same basic graphics models & engines) the ability to lower production costs increases. For instance, Nintendo uses alot of the same character models in the same games (SSBM models were used in the Mario Party games and were likely used in Kart, Golf & Tennis) which makes their job easier and in the end cheaper...the more this happens and the better developers get at this kind of game making then the lower the costs will be to them.
Also take into account that CAPCOM (who pay's licencing fee's to Nintendo to even make games on GAMECUBE) is selling their games for ~$40 on the platform and still making money, then Nintendo (who DOESN'T pay licencing on their own platform) charges $10+ more on their own games (some of which have lower production costs even) is making enough profit to eventually lower the prices on their own games.
I'm not saying this news is true...I'm just thinking with smaller, sequel-esque games it's totally not out of the question for Nintendo to launch them at $30...but bigger budget, more epic sellers (LOZ, for instance) would be allowed to be released for like $50.
Budget games have been researched for a while now...and I really think that if more companies could do it then games sales (and gaming as a whole) could reach a larger level of acceptance. Think, DVD's are between $10 - $20 for the most part, if games could some day reach that level then they could become easily more popular and thusly grow the industry to a serious mainstream level of consumer acceptance beyond music & movies. With the next generation coming, graphics won't get THAT much better, so once tools/systems are developed and learned, game production costs won't be that much higher and, in fact, will end up going down strengthening the chances of lowering the price of the games to the end consumer.
I love this idea and the idea of lowering licencing fee's on software by hardware makers eventually selling licences to make Nintendo and/or Sony game-enabled hardware.
P.S.- I just thought of something else. I believe "Revolution" will have alot more options as far as peripherals and types of interfaces go to build on this idea that this system is a "Revolution" and allows for more people to find new ways to play games...if they're working on lowering development costs & on adding cheap lil' gadget peripherals they can sell for profit then BAM, maybe Nintendo *is* looking into lowering the cost of games.
Also take into account that CAPCOM (who pay's licencing fee's to Nintendo to even make games on GAMECUBE) is selling their games for ~$40 on the platform and still making money, then Nintendo (who DOESN'T pay licencing on their own platform) charges $10+ more on their own games (some of which have lower production costs even) is making enough profit to eventually lower the prices on their own games.
I'm not saying this news is true...I'm just thinking with smaller, sequel-esque games it's totally not out of the question for Nintendo to launch them at $30...but bigger budget, more epic sellers (LOZ, for instance) would be allowed to be released for like $50.
Budget games have been researched for a while now...and I really think that if more companies could do it then games sales (and gaming as a whole) could reach a larger level of acceptance. Think, DVD's are between $10 - $20 for the most part, if games could some day reach that level then they could become easily more popular and thusly grow the industry to a serious mainstream level of consumer acceptance beyond music & movies. With the next generation coming, graphics won't get THAT much better, so once tools/systems are developed and learned, game production costs won't be that much higher and, in fact, will end up going down strengthening the chances of lowering the price of the games to the end consumer.
I love this idea and the idea of lowering licencing fee's on software by hardware makers eventually selling licences to make Nintendo and/or Sony game-enabled hardware.
P.S.- I just thought of something else. I believe "Revolution" will have alot more options as far as peripherals and types of interfaces go to build on this idea that this system is a "Revolution" and allows for more people to find new ways to play games...if they're working on lowering development costs & on adding cheap lil' gadget peripherals they can sell for profit then BAM, maybe Nintendo *is* looking into lowering the cost of games.
I'm just scared that if people start buying twice as many games then companies would start making twice as many to grab their share of them, and put half the effort into each one. I can definitely see EA going for this, and Nintendo's games this generation even at $50 haven't had the usual polish.
Late Stage Marxist
Member
Mario Kart is like $70 in Canada. Fucking lame.
Think it was around or just after E3 2003 he made those comments. In a way he acted upon them with the Custom Robo being released at $40, Wario Ware and Pokemon Channel at $30DrGAKMAN said:
There is a big difference between $30 MSRP ($22-$23 wholesale) and $50 ($38-$40 wholesale) for the publisher, especially a company like Nintendo who isn't paying intellectual property costs often (sports associations, film, comic book or music licensing for example). Since Nintendo don't pay the licensing fee, obviously, they really do make more money out of each unit sold. Considering GameCubes limited userbase and game prices haven't been shown to drive installed base significantly I don't believe Nintendo would be interested in lowering prices on their premium products. It'd make more sense to put the likes of Metroid and Zelda at $60 or more. Unlike their GBA games that sell month in month out (see Pokemon being in the upper reaches of the formats top 10 on NPD for 14 months now) Nintendo's Metroid and Zelda games sell to a hardcore and sales plummet after a couple of months (Metroid Prime's January 2003 sales were atrocious and it sold far more copies in its launch month of November than in December which is untypical for a mid-November release).DrGAKMAN said:
Can't fault the argument on costs issue, expenditure should come down significantly when you're using the same art assets and have a stable but flexible engine and code (something EA stress on almost every financial conference call they do when mentioning their custom middleware and tools). However, I don't think when Nintendo were gearing up for development this generation they expected to be selling to such a small userbase, remember Iwata's infamous 50 million GCs by end of 2005 claim? The costs to stay in the technology race, in development tools as well as game development is hardly a small amount and Nintendo have the added complication of having to provide SDKs and tools to third parties. One other point I'd make is the companies that use the pre-existing tools are usually developers commissioned by Nintendo not Nintendo themselves. Camelot for Mario Golf and Tennis, Hudson in the past for Mario Parties, Namco for Donkey Konga and Star Fox (yes, originally Rare created assets but still paid for by Nintendo) and Amusement Vision for F-Zero. A lot of what EAD and other internal studios do is create new content, quite different models for SMS, Zelda:WW and Zelda 2005 from what had gone before for example.
It is a matter of production costs, Capcom can keep churning out Megamans, Street Fighters and dare I say it look like doing a similar thing with Viewtiful Joe thanks to their nature, 2D sprite based games where you're just tweaking a very old and well-tuned engine doesn't cost much.DrGAKMAN said:
As mentioned above, they have been doing this with some titles such as Wario Ware Inc.DrGAKMAN said:
DVDs are a secondary revenue source, after a film comes out in the cinema you have DVD/Video sales and rental cable and TV rights. Good films retain their value very well. Sony and Time Warner mainly want MGM thanks to their back catalogue of titles not current production which is limited to one big blockbuster (Bond) and a few smaller budget but quite successful films recently (e.g. Legally Blonde). I'd disagree with your comments on the costs of future games, if you've seen the 3rd (?) unreal engine being demoed then there is a helluva lot of difference in graphics that we can expect next-gen. Even if graphics didn't take a massive leap there seems to be a greater concentration on physics and game ai. The rumoured 3 cored CPU for Xenon and the well documented Cell for PS3 see the complexity and costs mainly with the CPU, not the GPU which has been the more important component for a good twenty years. The expertise needed to put the complexity of the "Crash" XNA demo into a fully realised gaming world will not be cheap.DrGAKMAN said:
You'd have to throw away or at least radically change the razor and blades model. 3DO was a failure and Microsoft changed their utopian approach entirely from the inception of Xbox. J Allard talks about licensing others to make hardware but that's only if they get a good cut of the money and you'd have to guarantee the same to the likes of Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Philips and NEC.DrGAKMAN said:
I had a hunch about DS, and who didn't of one kind or other, Nintendo may have been trying something similar with their new portable device. Those demos at E3 for example, sell slightly more polished versions of, what were essentially re-invisioned retro games, emphasising on the innovative/gimmick either touchscreen, microphone or wifi and sell them for $10 a pop using the, supposedly, cheap Matrix storage. Comments from Iwata about "homogenous goods" and other snippets he talked about that don't seem to have come to fruition entirely with Nintendo's next portable machine, maybe for Revolution then .DrGAKMAN said: