In the UK its against the law to fix prices. Companies can give a recommended retail price but its up to individual retailers to choose how much they charge dependant on their margin mark up. Everywhere seems to have dropped their prices for Switch games apart from Game UK. Just spoke to someone in their customers services who said prices might drop before release but they don't price match so its a case of wait and see.
You cannot campare cardridge based n64 games with the currrent situation. There is competition and nintendo seems to always know best and thats the problem like with the wii u.
Actually, you can compare cartridges and cost now and then; Switch carts and games are far better value. They are likely/guaranteed to be much larger, with better graphics, sound and the games themselves are likely to be bigger too. There's no way you'd have got Zelda: BOTW on a N64 cart (3+GB space required for WiiU version) and if you did it would have cost squillions of quids. The largest N64 games were 64MB (Conker's Bad Fur Day and Resident Evil 2 IIRC) and they were +-£50. Yet today, here we are and we get it for £50. Not bad. Not bad at all.
As for competition there was just as much competition back in the day too, BTW.
No you cannot. Cardridges back in the day were quite expensive to produce and were on the decline. Cds were much cheaper (a fraction of the cost of a cardridge) and could hold much more data.
Then came dvds and later blurays, even holding more data. In the meantime flashdrives experienced growth and could hold more and more data. I dont know about production costs but I would say switch (or 3ds or ds) cards are cheaper than their cardridge counterparts of the snes/n64 era, or nes era if you will.
In the UK its against the law to fix prices. Companies can give a recommended retail price but its up to individual retailers to choose how much they charge dependant on their margin mark up. Everywhere seems to have dropped their prices for Switch games apart from Game UK. Just spoke to someone in their customers services who said prices might drop before release but they don't price match so its a case of wait and see.
While that might be true, its also up to the producer how much he wants to charge for their products and the margin involved will limit a retailer in setting their price. So if nintendo drops the official rrp, they will naturally have the retailer/wholesaler pay less for it. Otherwise nobody would buy it. THATS AN ECONOMIC FACT. Example, the switch costs 280, a wholesaler gets it for lets say 140, a retailer gets it for lets say 180, the retailer will sell it for 280 but there is VAT involved which is set by the given country, and there is income tax. After VAT is deducted, income tax is deducted and the result minus what the retailer had to pay for the product (the switch) is their profit. And this where they have a limit about how much down with the price they can go. If nintendo in turn would drop the price to lets say 100 for the wholesaler, the retailer might it for lets 140. Their profit increases by 40 and they might give you a better deal because they are still in the good. On the other hand, if nintendo were to officially go down with the rrp but would charge the wholesaler them same as before, they would just laugh at nintendo and tell them good bye.
@Honelith Fine, you and amazon convinced me to buy Zelda. But I got dog treats instead of coffee. I just bought Dragon Quest VIII yesterday which I could have used in the sale today.
Zelda had better be good.
Edgey, Gumshoe, Godot, Sissel, Larry, then Mia, Franziska, Maggie, Kay and Lynne.
I'm throwing my money at the screen but nothing happens!
@Honelith Fine, you and amazon convinced me to buy Zelda. But I got dog treats instead of coffee. I just bought Dragon Quest VIII yesterday which I could have used in the sale today.
You talk crap, games are larger because of the coding that needs to be done with shaders and graphics chips etc, as well as the crap they put in games to be ready for internet connections and piracy. You cannot argue the point that "games are better value because they are larger and better graphics", thats just stupid because it does not make a BETTER game!
Re-read what I said. I never said it made BETTER games - we were talking size, not quality of the game itself. Games today are bigger BECAUSE of the graphics and sound NOT the coding (have you ever actually coded anything? Obviously you haven't). Code size is incredibly small compared to the size of any media. A single texture can be far larger in size than the most complex code.
As an example go and create a single bitmap image in MSPaint or a paint program of your choice. Make the bitmap 1024x1024 (the size of an average size texture used in mobile development). And save it. The size of that image will be around 3MB - of course, when compressed losslessly the size is reduced, dramatically, however this has to then be un-compressed and will fill 3MB of available memory with that texture - the memory of a 16bit/32bit/64bit machine was MB not GB back then, and everything had to fit in memory that was being used for the current level/area etc.
Now copy everything in your post into a text editor and save. Compare the file sizes. The text is miniscule (less than 400bytes in WordPad); the image huge, in comparison. OK, that was a small text file and code is perhaps a million or so lines. But a game is also made up of hundreds, if not thousands of images and sound files. The bulk of a game IS NOT code. Shaders and anti-piracy measures are irrelevant - the code involved is microscopic in terms of memory used.
Games BITD used smaller textures and sound files; generated music (MIDI, MOD etc.) or for .WAV and other music formats, in a much lower bit-rate (less quality). These are severely compressed, compared to the raw audio, deliberately to reduce file size to fit on a cartridge etc. Todays games do not need to do this and therefore can have much better audio and visual qualities.
The cost of cartridges was/is an important factor, but CD based games themselves were still roughly the same price when they arrived as the regular cartridge games.
Therefore you can compare the past and the present - games are much better value now than they ever were. The cost of a game in the UK back in the 80-90s (SNES/MD/PS1/N64) was between £35-£45. The same as they cost now. Have a look at emulation sites, see the average download size for games of that era. Tiny compared to games nowadays. Yet the price is the same, yet everything else has gone up - bread, milk, petrol, energy, water, everything. Yet games are still roughly the same. In real terms the cost has gone down significantly.
You talk crap, games are larger because of the coding that needs to be done with shaders and graphics chips etc, as well as the crap they put in games to be ready for internet connections and piracy. You cannot argue the point that "games are better value because they are larger and better graphics", thats just stupid because it does not make a BETTER game!
Re-read what I said. I never said it made BETTER games - we were talking size, not quality of the game itself. Games today are bigger BECAUSE of the graphics and sound NOT the coding (have you ever actually coded anything? Obviously you haven't). Code size is incredibly small compared to the size of any media. A single texture can be far larger in size than the most complex code.
As an example go and create a single bitmap image in MSPaint or a paint program of your choice. Make the bitmap 1024x1024 (the size of an average size texture used in mobile development). And save it. The size of that image will be around 3MB - of course, when compressed losslessly the size is reduced, dramatically, however this has to then be un-compressed and will fill 3MB of available memory with that texture - the memory of a 16bit/32bit/64bit machine was MB not GB back then, and everything had to fit in memory that was being used for the current level/area etc.
Now copy everything in your post into a text editor and save. Compare the file sizes. The text is miniscule (less than 400bytes in WordPad); the image huge, in comparison. OK, that was a small text file and code is perhaps a million or so lines. But a game is also made up of hundreds, if not thousands of images and sound files. The bulk of a game IS NOT code. Shaders and anti-piracy measures are irrelevant - the code involved is microscopic in terms of memory used.
Games BITD used smaller textures and sound files; generated music (MIDI, MOD etc.) or for .WAV and other music formats, in a much lower bit-rate (less quality). These are severely compressed, compared to the raw audio, deliberately to reduce file size to fit on a cartridge etc. Todays games do not need to do this and therefore can have much better audio and visual qualities.
The cost of cartridges was/is an important factor, but CD based games themselves were still roughly the same price when they arrived as the regular cartridge games.
Therefore you can compare the past and the present - games are much better value now than they ever were. The cost of a game in the UK back in the 80-90s (SNES/MD/PS1/N64) was between £35-£45. The same as they cost now. Have a look at emulation sites, see the average download size for games of that era. Tiny compared to games nowadays. Yet the price is the same, yet everything else has gone up - bread, milk, petrol, energy, water, everything. Yet games are still roughly the same. In real terms the cost has gone down significantly.
Pre ordered Zelda today for £40. Amazon UK today only (2 hours left) have a £10 of £50 code. Code is BIGTHANKS Zelda is £49.99 so you need to add something to top it over £50. I went with a 20p sim card.
@Andrzej777 This is of course true. The switch console will have a very small profit margin as do all games consoles. Nintendo promised not to sell the unit at a loss and unfortunately the economic situation in the UK means we seem to be paying top end prices for the Switch. The margin is always in the software and accessories. When I worked in retail we where pushed for as many add on sales as possible as this is where the profit lies. I remember original PLaystation games having a cost price of £7 or £8 but where then sold at £39.99. The fact that there is a large difference in prices between retailers (Game UK selling Zelda for £59.99 and Argos selling for £49.99) shows that at the moment retailers and trying to gauge what we as consumers are willing to pay. Early adopters such as myself always pay more. I know I shouldn't pay the inflated prices and wait a few months for the prices to drop but I also enjoy getting my hands on new tech first and for me the premium cost is worth it.
@Andrzej777 This is of course true. The switch console will have a very small profit margin as do all games consoles. Nintendo promised not to sell the unit at a loss and unfortunately the economic situation in the UK means we seem to be paying top end prices for the Switch. The margin is always in the software and accessories. When I worked in retail we where pushed for as many add on sales as possible as this is where the profit lies. I remember original PLaystation games having a cost price of £7 or £8 but where then sold at £39.99. The fact that there is a large difference in prices between retailers (Game UK selling Zelda for £59.99 and Argos selling for £49.99) shows that at the moment retailers and trying to gauge what we as consumers are willing to pay. Early adopters such as myself always pay more. I know I shouldn't pay the inflated prices and wait a few months for the prices to drop but I also enjoy getting my hands on new tech first and for me the premium cost is worth it.
@Andrzej777 This is the world we live in unfortunately.
Yep, wonder where this is heading to. Another thought in regard my latest favorite topics, which is nintendos outrageous pricing. ☺
Sometimes you need to be willing to make a loss in order to make a profit. This could be true for the brexit as well ☺
Brits voted to Brexit and trashed the value of their pound in the process. Everything imported either has or will have its price adjusted accordingly. Get used to the new reality.
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Topic: £60.00 uk money for a game?
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