Are Video Games Too Expensive?

BY Andrew Miesner / February 19, 2009

On Wednesday, February 18, Gabe Newell, Valve Software President, gave a speech at the annual DICE summit.  Mr. Newell said that experimenting with package pricing and day-by-day pricing was not highly recommended by Valve leaders.  However, Valve was quite delighted by the consumer response to their break in monotonous pricing. These promotions and packages that Valve has put in place have reportedly increased their sale of certain test games, such as Left 4 Dead, by over 3,000 percent.

Valve has been testing this theory for quite some time now and has reduced prices on both third-party games and their own house games.  They have gathered enough information to conclude that reducing the cost of video games and promoting them more has actually increased overall revenues.

Other large game manufacturers and publishers are already not happy about Valve’s actions. Valve may have just caused another exponential stir in the video game community.   One can only sit back and see how other companies react to this pricing proposition.  Good luck to all companies!

 

Source: Edge Online