Yeah $59-$69 price tag games arent anything new.. I paid $79.99 for that crappy Sega Genesis "Role Playing" game Sword of Vermillion (something like that) WAYY back in the day.. so thats probably over $100 with inflation.

I vote with my wallet, and refuse to pay $59.99 for a game. I buy them on sale, or I wait until they drop the price. It unfortunately means I miss out on a lot of launch week fun. However, given that my game backlog is already too long, it behooves me to avoid adding to the stack!

I hear ya, I feel the exact same thing, because after tax it's around $80. That's closer to $100 than I'm comfortable with. What I end up doing is picking up the game the week it's released, as Best Buy and Future Shop regularly drop the price $10. That way I'm a lot more happy spending $59.99.

I also remember when cartridge prices were insanely high. 15 or so years ago I remember dropping $90 CDN or so for Super Street Fighter 2 for the SNES, and I remember the first party N64 titles going for $80-$100 CDN.

I'm comfortable with the 60 dollar price point. Thats just sticker shock and I think the deeper question is how many hours of enjoyment do you get out of a game.

If you get 100 hours of play or more out of a game... was that worth 60.00? Probably, its pretty cheap entertainment. With LIVE games, the countless hours of online play sweeten the deal.
On the other hand, many people will pay 150 or more for cable, but how many hours of it do they personally watch per month. They pay for the opportunity to watch it, but when life's busy, who has time for tv.

For those who can wait, the prices drops back down to more reasonable prices and of course at that point you get a lot more bang for the buck.

Personally, I have noticed I look more closely at the local gamestop inventories when they run a used B2G1F. I gotta admit, I snagged six nice to have titles during december... the B2G1F on already discounted games and the condition of the discs hit my pricepoint. I've got them waiting for when I finish up some of my current games. In my mind this has balanced out some of investment in the full price games as my average spend per title is pulled down a bit.

Dont over analyze or critique this.. I'm happy! Don't shatter my house-of-glass illusion.

for me, its not about how much it will cost total,.. its about how much I will play it.

Like this game, I give 120 hours tops in the next three months. That's about fifty cents an hour I play. My ultimate limit for video games is 60 cents, but I like to stay a comfortable 23 cents an hour if I can, so I have some video game budget for sudden deals, unknown titles, and the occasional impulse buy.

I will wait for the Crackdown demo, which comes out in a week. How Crackdown and Armored Core 4 pan out will help me decide when I get Lost Planet.

And even if I don't pick LP up right away, I still got the action figure for my pre-order.

That being said, Rainbow Six Vegas is a great game, as long as you don't know anything about actual military equipment, and expect to always play with the same calibur of people. Most of the guns in the game are "balanced" beyond the point where they are practical, and some choices don't make sense. To be honest, your "elite" unit has some of the most "hollywood" guns, and Marines in Iraq and suits in the Dept of Homeland Security are outfitted with better weaponry than your domestic counter-terrorism team. There are also other advantages to some of the weapons as well, like the combat advantage of a close physical attack with a shotgun. The game seriously lacks physical attacks and most close-in combat is laughable.

Give me a Benelli 20 guage, a Sig P210, and a Anschutz .222 with a 8x scope.

I paid $60 for Tecmo Super Bowl "back in the day". So the prices don't seem out of line to me, especially given development costs of some games these days.

I'm with you on this one Dr. J. I find it pretty hard to drop ~$80 on a game. I'm all about finding a good deal, and for the most part, I'm willing to wait a while until something hits my price range.
I've never been a huge game buyer, I usually just rent games, and if they're good, I'll look for a deal on ebay.
You're looking at a guy who bought the french version of GoW to save $30. Well, the only difference between the french and english versions was that the french version had a french cover and manual lamely shrink wrapped to the outside of the english version. Score one for the cheap guy.

For me, rental is solving the problem. Between Gameznflix and demos, I think my jones is cured for a while. A whole year of 3-out gameznflix is $200, which is about three games. I can't see how this isn't a huge deal given that there are very few games that have held my interest for an entire year. If you figure the attention span of a game is 6 months, that means I'm essentially getting 6 games for 33 bucks a pop. The reality is a lot better than that, if you are a game-browser like me.

If rental services really take off, it puts pressure on retail prices. This forces game companies to try and make games that have legs. I can't see how this isn't good for consumers.

Wasn't that before most of the security measures that keep you from walking out with things under your sweatshirt?

The cost you are willing to pay for games is extremely subjective, at least with me it is. Take for example, Dead Rising. I desperately wanted to pick this game up on launch but stopped myself, assuring myself that there would be a good sale in little more than a month. It didn't happen. Two months later, the game was still $60 and I was bored as hell so I picked it up. Was it worth $60? Absolutely. This didn't work when I bought Just Cause at launch, its a great game but not worth the $50 I payed for it. Your best bet for getting games for good prices at or near launch is to check out Cheapassgamer. Thanks to CAG, I got Vegas for under $35 USD at Best Buy last week.

Theres more in that $12 Retail figure than just the profit a retailer makes on a title.. there are a combination of costs associated to the Publisher in getting that title to retail.

A guy I know in the UK is lucky if he makes £3 to £5 on new 360 releases. He also gets gouged by the distributors in the UK, who mark up on big releases so he has to order huge amounts of stock just to turn a profit. He makes the money to keep the company running from the second hand market.

From Forbes.

For those interested the article's pie animation has more detail on each slice...

Well when I was younger price never seemed a factor. Once I bought the japanese version of street fighter 2 for the super nes just to have it a few months early. That cost me $120 then... Lets just say I wasn't as patient as I try to be now.

Now that I'm older I'm less likely to outright just impulse buy a game and give it a try. I'm not so sure that the price is the sole factor behind this, but it surely is a part.

I would have thought console games would be cheaper than pc games too just because consoles do not come in the variety of configurations pc's do.