So, Microsoft is banning consoles again, eh? Normally, I would agree with such a practice, but now, not so much. Let’s examine a few factors, no?
Games – new – are $60 plus tax. Depending upon where you live, you can pay upwards of nearly $70 per game. Now factor in details of the game itself, the gameplay mechanics, story, audio, visual, etc.
Say the story is lousy. The controls are rather clunky, but with practice, workable. The visuals and sound are up to par, though. Is that worth the $60+? Hardly. DVDs cost you about $20-30. $10 or less if they’re in the bargain bin.
What if a game has only a few hours of gameplay? If you’re able to breeze through a game in six hours or less, you have literally paid the company around $10 an hour to be entertained. That is more than minimum wage in the US. Resident Evil 5 can be completed in 4-5 hours on the ‘normal’ setting. In turn, you have just given Capcom about $9 dollars per hour of gameplay.
What about replayability? Is playing through a game just once worth $60? I really don’t think so. Yes, you can only play a game so many times before you get sick of it, but shouldn’t you be able to enjoy the experience more than once in a different light? Maybe you missed something the first time around. Maybe you enjoy going for achievements. If a game is so linear, so boring, it leaves nothing to be desired. There is no stimulation, just mindless button pressing. Mmm, fun.
Then we go on to games with glitched achievements. Even better, when they’re known, and there is no update to fix it. I played through a game on the hardest difficulty once to get the three achievements for hard, normal and easy in one go. Instead, I got the achievements for normal and easy. I found out that it was a fairly common glitched achievement when I perused the forums, yet there has been no patch released from the makers of the game. When you work towards something that has a reward – anything, even, not just games – and you don’t get what you worked for, you lose the desire for it.
Needless to say, that game has just been collecting dust in my collection.
There is also the argument that you can sell the game if you dislike it. Let’s do the math.
Retail price – about $64.19, depending on how much sales tax is added to your purchase.
You dislike the game, therefore you sell it to GameStop, some independent store in your area, wherever. You get around $15 for the game. Yeah, it’s still new, but it’s been opened. It’s already in ‘used’ condition.
They sell it for $54.99. They are making a profit of $34.99 off of YOU. Also, by selling the game for that $15, you have lost approximately $49.19. In this recession, $49.19 actually means something. That could have been a credit card payment, perhaps groceries for a few days (depending on the size of your household), used for some other necessity, or even used to purchase another form of entertainment.
You can claim that people can rent games. The issue with this is that Blockbusters put a lot of ‘Mom & Pop’ rental stores out of business. Now Blockbuster seems to be feeling that burn, due to GameFly. If there is no rental store out where you live, you turn to GameFly. GameFly may take a few days to get to you, depending on your location. Also, when a new game comes out, the availability is limited. You may be on a waiting list for quite some time following the release, because there are also no late fees. If you have a handful of people ahead of you on the list, and each one takes more than a week with the game, how long will it really be before you have a chance at it?
Don’t get me wrong – there definitely are games out there that are worth the $60. Unfortunately, they are few and far between.
I can’t say that I blame people for modding their consoles and pirating games. A dual layer disc costs around $2-3 a piece. You can buy the game cases in bulk for cheap. The paper and ink for the manuals might be a bit pricier, but all together it doesn’t add up to $60 per game if the content of the game itself doesn’t deliver. I would have no issue dropping $60 on a game if it actually had something to offer.
Don’t get me wrong, pirating software is theft, goes against the Terms of Service/Use, but can you blame people with limited options? Or should this form of fun and entertainment be limited to those with fat wallets?
