Microsoft has admitted that the average price of Xbox Live Arcade games is on the rise, with more new games costing 1200 Microsoft Points (MSP) than ever before, but believes the increase is justified by a rise in quality of games available on the service.
Speaking to GI.biz at last week's Develop conference in Brighton, XBLA portfolio director Chris Charla said: "If you look at Live Arcade, and at the publicly available sales numbers, you can see that the average prices on XBLA have crept up over the last few years, which has been an interesting trend because on some app markets there's been a race to zero as fast as possible.
"We've seen a little bit of the opposite happening. I don't really know where prices are going to go - ultimately, that's set by the market - but it has been really gratifying to see that people are willing to pay a premium price for digital content."
Charla is right abour price: in 2009, 21 of 86 games released on the service were priced at 1200 MSP; last year that rose to 27 of 85; and this year has already seen 20 games released at the maximum price. However, he believes this is justified by an increase in quality.
Claiming that the average Metacritic score for XBLA games has risen 12 points since 2008, he said: "Sometimes, when [devs] talk about Live Arcade, they're like: 'We want to do a boxed-quality game on Live Arcade,' and I'm like: 'What does that mean?' I can point to a bunch of 38 and 42 and 56 Metacritic-scoring boxed games, so it actually kind of pisses me off. I think the games that we're shipping - a Limbo or a Castle Crashers - are as good as anything on the market."
The gradual increase in prices on XBLA is certainly out of sync with other digital download services, and mobile app stores in particular. Another area where Microsoft's strategy differs from that of its peers is free-to-play, and while Charla declined to comment on recent rumours that the firm is to follow the lead of Steam and several high-profile online titles and offer free-to-play games and microtransaction support, neither did he rule it out.
"Sometimes people get this incorrect impression about Microsoft, that we're very hide-bound or set in our ways, and just because somebody might not have been seeing everything that we're doing, they might think that Microsoft will never do that," he said.
"The reality is...it's actually a pretty dynamic company, and always eager to look and learn. We want to do things right, so we might take our time, but we're always eager to see the innovations people are bringing us."
Source: Gameindustry.biz
Comments
5Bastion is certainly worth 1200 MSP, but MS need to be very careful. There's only so much I'm prepared to pay for digital content, once it's above that cealing the quality of the game is immaterial.
I wont pay full price for any game any more. If shops can afford to drop the price of new games by 30-50% in the 2-3 months after release, they could have released it at that price in the first place.
As for Xbox live releases, it's interesting he says that because actually I've thought that the average quality of download releases has been dropping, and certainly not worth 15-20 quid!!
Yeah, I catch myself thinking that 1200 points is too much when I can get something good on iPhone or the Mac Appstore for £2.99 (Defence of the Oasis FTW). My perception of prices right now is totally screwy because there isn't any kind of standard. It doesn't help that Microsoft insists on using its MSP and not real money. 1200 sounds like LOADS.
Microsoft's also to blame for the rash of day-one DLC, and on-disc unlocks and other content which had been free in previous games. They've been keen to force monetization of pretty much everything, including free services such as multiplayer, web services (Facebook, Last.fm), and paid services such as Netflix. Their touted "microtransactions" evolved into full-blown consumer gouging, and the promise of user-created content never came to be.
I guess they're still trying to make up those lost Vista sales somewhere :)
Given a choice, I always buy the PS3 version. I let my Gold subscription lapse after 7 years because I was fed up with the constant nickel & diming. If it's only on Xbox, I typically wait for a sale, even if it means waiting. I've got a backlog of games to catch up on anyway, so I'm not really missing out on anything :)
I'm not buying Bastion because i don't have the hard drive space. I haven't bought most XBLA games because the quality just isn't there, contrary to what Microsoft says. I don't see the current price point as correct and will only buy an OK game for 400 MSP, a good game for 800 MSP and a stellar game like Shadow Complex or Bastion for 1200 MSP. They can view things how they want, they just won't sell as many copies as they could because their pricing is out of whack.
I'm not saying I won't pay for XBLA games, I am saying that until a hard drive is market price I won't buy a new one, and that will limit my buying potential, additionally I won't buy XLBA games with out of whack prices.