http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Da...
On Amazon, these games are listed for the Wii U for 49.99 USD: Dirt, Tekken, and Ninja Gaiden 3. Could it be true?

This is low i think the system will effectively be cheap. All the game may be priced low so buying an expensive system will not seem as bad.

I can't see those games coming to PS3/X360 for $50, so I don't think this will be true. I'd like to be surprised, though.

Pretty good price,£50 in the UK I bet.

This would be a semi-big risk for Nintendo. I could see some games, especially ports doing this, maybe more than on 360 or Ps3, but all of them, especially 3rd party? No way. (nor should they considering their painfully over-the-top budgets for games nowadays)

Well here in Australia it's upto $60AU for 3DS, $80AU for Wii, $100AU for HD consoles.... and it's still pretty much 1AUD = 1USD....

I'd be pretty happy with even $60US.... hell, give me $80US for Wii U games and I'll still be happy!

$50 is fair, please keep the price point, I couldn't afford much more for each game. It's why I get so few 360 games. If they reach $60 each, I'll still get the games, just probably not as many.

That's what they are now isn't it? I pay £29.99 for new Wii releases without thinking about it (talking games like Xenoblade Chronicles here); don't see why Wii-U games would cost more.

I would be surprised if they weren't $59.99. Development costs are likely to be much higher for the Wii U than the Wii.

If Wii U games will be $59.99 at launch than PLEASE lower them in price sooner! It took you, what, 5 years to drop Twilight Princess's price from $49.99 to $19.99 but Halo Reach is already at $25.15 on amazon and that's the case with %90 of video games on non-nintendo consoles. You could learn a thing or two from these publishers Nintendo.

Retailers lower the price. Just saying.

Of every game?

"The average development budget for a multiplatform next-gen game is $18-$28 million, according to new data." - http://www.develop-online.net/news/33625/Study-Average-dev-co...

Let's do the math:
Cost to develop game: $18,000,000 (Conservative)
Sell: $60.00 ea
How many games need to be sold to cover the cost of development if each company received the full $60.00 per game: 300,000

But wait, companies don't make $60.00 per game, that is what the retailers sell it for and they must make a profit on it at there sell price of $60!

Here's a chart to explain how that $60.00 gets split up.

Let's add the 15% from marketing, 15% for the developer, and 30% for the publisher or a total of $36 ($30 for $50.00 game) towards covering the conservative development cost of $18,000,000 to develop a video game. How many games sold at $60.00 must the developer sell to cover the $18,000,000 development cost? Answer, 500,000!

What is a good profit percentage for a video game company to keep operating and producing video games? 25%? Seems like a low percentage to me but lets use that anyway. 25% profit margin on a cost of $18,000,000 would equal $24,000,000 in total sales or 666,667 copies or 800,000 copies for a game sold at $50.00.

Costs are only going up with inflation and new technology so lets see how many copies need to be sold for a video game company developing a game for the “average high side” cost of $28,000,000. In this example let’s lower the gross profit margin to a low 15% for a sales target of $32,941,000. At the sell price of $60 a game that is 915,025 copies sold or at $50 that is 1,098,034.

But we all know it is not this simple. Game prices drop rather quickly in the stores and the above examples show how many more games need to be sold to make up for the $10 difference in MSRP. Be careful what you wish for people. Cheaper is not better for the industry unless you like seeing things like more video game related layoffs, cancelled projects, companies shutting down or moving to mobile phone game development, and a lack of innovation.

@Ryno but that's... that's over nine thousand! What is this I don't even

YMMV

True story. I was halfway into writing this exact post before I noticed you did my job for you.

i like you.

I would say that 50% over production costs is a healthy, sustainable return on a game. Anything less, and you don't really have margin to be creative and risk a commercial flop.

Yeah but Nintendo games tend to sell even after they've been out for a while. The problem with Halo is that fans will scoop it up during it's release and after that it doesn't sell as much because Halo fans already have it.

@Ryno The problem is, or isn't, that the majority of consumers don't care. I can only speak for myself, but I assume most are like me. If I can buy something cheaper, I probably will. Greedy consumerism. Intangible consequences probably won't check the greed of the masses.

Well, the sooner the games industry realised that losing 10 per cent of sales numbers to sell at $10 higher price is financially a better idea than trying to break sales figure records, the better.

And if Nintendo sell their own games online?

also I suspect that that chart is very, very broken if you look outside of the US. The Australian split is going to have a hell of a lot more fat you could easily trim for example.