Warren Spector wants overall game prices reduced

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Warren Spector wants overall game prices reduced

Posted Mar 30th 2009 4:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz

We've all heard comments from game industry reps saying how "cheap" PC and video games are compared to other entertainment media. However the fact is that no matter how many hours you may spend with a game you still have to deal with higher prices up front compared to renting or buying a DVD or downloading music.

Legendary game developer Warren Spector (currently head of Junction Point Studios) says it's time that the game industry take a good hard look at the pricing of their products. Gamesindustry.biz reports that Spector, speaking at GDC last week, stated, "We've been a niche medium that over-charges for its product and therefore generates a lot of revenue which makes us a little bigger than Hollywood, which is crazy."

Spector says the industry should go after the impulse entertainment market for its prices. He says in the article, "If I've got a 20 dollar bill in my pocket I can go buy a book, go to a movie, but I can't buy a game. I can buy a CD, I can do so much even now, but you cannot buy a game." To be fair you can in fact buy some games for $20 out of the box or wait until their prices go down months or even years after release. However it's clear that Spector's comments go after the vast majority of retail game products that are priced at $40, $50 and $60 (even more if you talk about collector's editions).

Tags: game-prices, gdc-2009, junction-point-studios, warren-spector

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

LOL @ the pointing arrow. This man truly is a legend and he knows what he is talking about.Posted at 4:17PM on Mar 30th 2009 by Dragan

CliffyB said something not to dissimilar a while back, and Epic's games are still status quo price (even UT3 was $50 bucks when released). Until these guys put their money where their mouths are, they should relax with the soapbox talk.

If Spector really wanted to have $20 games, he'd be best to become an independent developer and set his own prices. However, as he stated in a past GDC rant, you can't survive being an independent developer...so I guess its back to square one.Posted at 6:09PM on Mar 30th 2009 by ChimpWithAHandgun

Heh. I buy $20 games all the time -- look at half of what Steam offers, it's near to well below that price point. I understand what he's saying, but the fact is that there's obviously a market for AAA games with multi-multi-million dollar budgets, and it's probably not going away any time soon.

If you ever read this: Deus Ex was a *masterpiece*.Posted at 8:58PM on Mar 30th 2009 by James

Well... I'd spend more money on games if they were cheaper.Posted at 9:19AM on Mar 31st 2009 by ahac

James you are definately right BUT only Deus Ex 1!
Deus Ex 2 is horrible :( And i dont even mean the story but the gameplay mechanics and the size of the levels are just laughable. Ok there are much more ways to solve the problems but the game feels much more like a tunnel with side tunnels and they are all going in the same direction and merge togehter again. so you do different stuff but it just feels like the same and at most places its soo obvious as if they try to stick the different solutions in your eye....
enough dx2 rant (dx3 will be a good game but it never will be a real dx game)Posted at 4:49AM on Apr 15th 2009 by overflow