Topic: Should publishers lower costs if games don't do well?

Or would this cause gamers to boycott games to make it fail on purpose just so the publishers would lower the price?

ya it would, i wish life could be fair like that for the devs but im sorry boycotting wud be the way of the world if that was the case. I say they shud set the most realistic prices instead of always usualy setting them at 59.99 for new releases like they do here in canada at least

EDIT oooo do u mean for wiiware games not wii games lol?

I don't think the publishers get to make that decision; Nintendo sets the final price. I'm willing to bet Bplus would be happy to lower the price of Plattchen if they thought it would get them more euros!

Don't publishers do this anyway? IE Moon didn't do well and it came down to $20 pretty quick.

You mean for download game, right? Because if I recall, retail games have done this for a long time...

The thread is in the WiiWare section, people.

If it's WiiWare, I wish.

Oh duh. Then no, I don't think so.

Well I would figure the game prices would be universal, or at least close to it. Take for example Gradius Rebirth, right now in the NA region its 1000 Wii Points while Europe has it for 600. Might not sound fair for us, but then again we do have some games cheaper (like Plattchan) over here (NA).

I think once a game drops in price in some other region it should drop everywhere else, but I guess that might be asking too much.

Oh, silly me.

It would be nice if companies did that, but there's no chance of that happening. Though if they added free trials to the games, they could sell more, since people could try the game out firsthand and not feel like they're taking a gamble.

If they start lower prices, we all would just wait and wait and wait ... and wouldn't download anymore.

Downloadable games defy some of the basic premises of supply and demand (ie. you're never in a situation where you've shipped X,000 copies and only a tenth of them sold, leaving the remainder to clog up retail shelves), so it certainly isn't clear that price drops would be a useful strategy in uniform way in this context. If they test the water a bit, however, and find out through surveys or general buzz that the asking price on a particular downloadable game is playing an unusually large role in turning away consumers, then a price drop might work out.

the problem with this is that they'd probably start building in the overhead necessary for them to still be able to turn a profit even after lowering their prices, thus making it all moot in the end. the occasional sale would be one thing, or a deal where if you purchase two games in one session you'd get them both for a reduced price, but for individual downloadable games, i'd rather have them set one price and just stick to it, the way they've been doing.

I asked him what he meant, cuz wiiware didnt seem pratical for this question, n i got no response.

However, i did get another view on the situation, if u did have lowering prices than its cheap cuz some people would initially buy the game at say 1000 points but then the price is dropped to 600...which isnt fair. Also, this could be a negative thing because then if companies sell games really well and they are only 500 points, they may choose to increase the price and get more profit from their successful game, disadvantaging those who want to buy the game later.

I don't think its completely up to the publishers how many points their game costs. Also, since no game has reduced its price on wiiware I think its probably nintendo's policy not to change the price on a game once it comes out in a region.

It's Nintendo's policy not to reduce the price of their RETAIL games, so I'm quite certain the same applies for WiiWare, unfortunatly. With WiiWare, I don't generally like spending 1000+ points on a game (too big a risk), so I just don't try a lot of games out. A demo system should've been implimented by now. I could be missing out on some great stuff for all I know, but I wouldn't risk it because I've been burned before, and on some cheaper titles, too. So I just generally try to avoid WiiWare I don't already know I want. So much for downloadable games being good for impulse purchases, huh?

People aren't organized enough for that. Some will always wait for a pricedrop but those aren't a large enough number to make a publisher wrongly think a game is failing.

Besides, if everybody's buying a game only at a lower price maybe that'll make publishers finally lower the price of new games. Maybe that'll even fix the whole used game and piracy problems.

I think we should have demos of wii ware games.. but that's just me...

I'd be afraid that the publishers would inflate the prices. I vote for leaving the prices how they are and offering demos instead

That's a great idea. I don't see what would be wrong with that, other than for those developers who know their games suck balls, and that would definitely make game developers think twice before marketing something that's crap.