Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to cost £55
Activision has boosted the cost of Modern Warfare 2 standard edition because of "a weak pound".
Activision claims that the weak performance of the pound, combined with record development costs, have forced the cost of the game to be raised to £54.99 on all platforms.
There are now murmurings of other publishers following suit and raising prices too, according to MCV. Electronic Arts is apparently looking to raise the price of Need for Speed: Shift, while Nintendo upped the price of the Wii by £20 not to long ago as well.
"You can't continue to trade as normal when the biggest territory in Europe has seen cost of goods increase by 30 per cent due to the strengthening of the Euro. Publishers somehow need to offset this drastic increase in costs," said THQ's publishing boss Ian Curran.
As many critics of the price hike have pointed out though, Activision and Co. are unlikely to lower the price once the pound strengthens again, meaning that we can expect to be paying a lot more for games in the future.
What are your reactions? Personally, we're not totally against the idea of paying a bit more for games that give a bit more in terms of length and replayability, such as most epic RPGs. Games that only offer a handful of hours and then a compensatory multiplayer offering though? £55 is unarguably steep, in our opinion - especially when you consider what else you could do with £55.
Are you happy to pay more for your games, or do you think that publishers should look at lowering costs before raising prices? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyNo launch purchase from me. Robdogs know damn well it'll be £40 within a month.
I do not mind paying for games, but prices need to be reasonable. 64 euros for one game clearly isn't. If they truely want the sharing community to come back on board, they should have prices hovering around 20-25 euros per game. That's properly in the range of impulse buys for young people everywhere, and they would double or triple their game sales easily.
This price hike will cost them money, mark my words.
Seriously though £55 is a p*** take..... and they wonder why people pirate games....
Who in there right mind is gonna shell out 55 quid on that, even if it is a brilliant game.
/Facepalm
They claim development costs are high.
Why is that not affecting the US price, then?
Why should we be paying damn near the same price for the standard edition that they do for the hardened edition?
Games publishers need to take a good hard look at Steam's statistics - they sell a LOT more when games are on "sale" at ~£25 or less - it's the economy of scale, sell a tiny number of high cost items, or a shedload of sales of low cost items. The latter actually makes more profit in the long term.
"I've got a solution!.....raise the price to £55 for a GAME and increase the amount of people who will pirate it!....I mean it's not like piracy will increase if we make the price silly will it."
"That's a brilliant idea!....lets do it!"
Thats the sort of bs I'd expect from a politician. But Blizzard Activision are clearly used to subscription fees from 'World of Point Click' and are charging an obsurd amount to offset this. Sell cheaply and flood the market......
Console games have been costing 800,- (local) here for a while (i.e. a year+ )... converted to your currency, that's ~60GBP (thank you, XE)
the bit of a price increase on the console isn't going to make or break it for me... the PC pricing is a bit ludicrous, though...
if you buy a DVD and watch it say 3 times that what roughly £1.50 an hour
buy a game and get teh same rate of £1.50 an hour thats only 36.6hrs i know for a fact that i spend way over that on the good games that i buy so £55 for a good game is not totally unjustified
(my problem lies with actors getting paid £20m to do a movie, and people say footballers are overpaid!!!)
yeah but you will want to play diablo for 100's of hours is £60 too much for that?
When it's 20ish i'll think about it, till then I'll wait
Agreed... what fools. Talk about setting yourself up for a fall.
No - because it's to do with a currency conversion, the speculation is that the online RRP will be the same as the retail one.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=770231 <- epic thread with 600k views
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/restofworld/
http://steamunpowered.eu/
here is a nice comparison
http://img.techpowerup.org/090717/Capture026.jpg
who wants to waste 252% more on a crappy game?
and to be on topic :p
http://img.techpowerup.org/090717/Capture025.jpg
steam-prices greasemonkey script
http://steam-prices.googlecode.com/
Activision: "Lower prices on PS3 or we will no longer support it. Oh yeah and we will raise the price of our latest game."
£55 is a bit over the odds, but I'm fairly sure that some console games have been released at around the £50 mark - people still buy them in droves. Granted that PC gaming is different - because it's much less accessible, you can almost eliminate a good portion of the gaming market in general. Hence PC gamers tend to be a bit more discerning, and they're less likely to be the younger audience who bully/badger their parents into buying the games they want.
It stinks, but there's not a whole hell of a lot consumers can do except vote with their wallets. If the price is too high then don't buy it. If the game comes down to what you'd consider an acceptable price, then go for it. The publishers will doubtless be keeping an eye on the sales figures, so if the sales at launch are practically nothing then utterly rocket when the price comes down, then I doubt they'd fail to see their blunder.
Even so, there will still be people who will buy it regardless - so they'll still get good sales and will have set the precedent for releasing games at a high price. Just like there will still be people who buy the uber-swanky version with night-vision goggles, regardless of what ridiculous price is set for that.
the news the following month
Activision announces record losses due to stupid marketing and attempting to gouge foreign players....
People have already said this too - the pound is strengthening again now so if game prices didn't go up when the £ was weakest they shouldn't really be going up now - after all we are still in recession and the games industry seems to the the only one increasing prices - because that won't stop people buying it 'till the January sales after Christmas (that's when i'll grab it now, it's only a couple of months after release anyway).
Either that or i'll get it of ebay second hand as i did with the last COD:MW sold it on for less than a pound loss too. It doesn't seem to have ever dropped below £30 as i had intended to pick it up again for another run through since its been ages since i sold it.
Play £29.99
Amazon £29.99
and Amazon specifically says that they charge the lowest price they offer before release.
Thats £119.99 For xbox users, for the ridiculously overpriced prestige edition, still, it is tempting, its such a piece of geek chic.
As far as i can see, they dont have a prestige version for the pc :(
I'm really curious what they have to say about this.
as has been made evident with the Windows 7 pre-order, buy/pre-order it NOW at that price, because it may well go up to £50 very soon, and once it does you won't get it for the cheaper price unless you put your order in during the lower price....
Well yes... I didn't think I had to say "from the time you place your order".
To clarify, my intent was to convey something similar to the following.
"For those who want the game now, don't want to pay the ridiculous price, and don't want to wait a few months for the price to come down after release: Gentlemen place your orders!" ... OK?
I won't
oh they'll blame piracy and then modern warfare 3 will be console only due to "piracy"
things in South Africa are waaaaay over priced so same deal in Nambia I'd of thought
So Ive just done that to safeguard my purchase at a reasonable price.
There is no way in hell I would pay £55 for this game, on PC or console. In fact, I rarely buy a console game at full price these days. £40 is too much to be honest. £35 max is fair for consoles, and £30 max on the PC.
I suspect they'll bang on about this price hike for a while, then knock a tenner off prior to launch, hoping to be seen as caving in to public demand.
It is a shame. I was looking forward to that game, but I won't be buying it now; I'll just read the reviews and hope it's crap.
Naughty mode? just come out and say your going to pirate it, if you dont like the price don't pay for it, don't go with the crowd and pirate it, that only gives them more fuel when deciding not to dev for the PC.
Video games are about the only thing that hasn't risen in price over the years in line with inflation, if they need to raise the price then so be it, don't like it, don't buy it.
Costing more than you are willing to pay is not free licence to steal it.
Exactly, but wait for the Pirate defenders to come here now and trash our posts. People do everything to justify piracy, wrong is a wrong.
Not that I'm really interested in the CoD franchise; I didn't finish number 3, didn't make it past the first mission on Modern Warfare and didn't really think much to WaW either.
Just because something costs more than you're willing to pay, or more than you think its worth, doesn't mean you can then go steal it.
Depending on reviews, I may still buy it on release day since if its anything like CoD4, I'll get my money's worth...
My plan is to hangfire on buying this one until it Game (other retailers are available) drops the price.
If more people paid for their software, users could demand lowers prices, and studios could commit to larger budgets, safe in the knowledge that if their hard work is a success, they will actually profit proportionally to the number of users who use their code.
As much as I enjoy a freebie, and have used pirated software in the past, who hasn't?, it is a form of theft. If you went for a meal in a restaurant and ran off without paying, no sane person would argue that you have had an inalienable right to deprive the restaurant and its workers of payment for their hard work. However if you receive crappy service and terrible food, you are legally entitled to pay only what you deem the meal was worth, the restaurant would then have to prove that your experience of the meal was not justified, the same principle should work for software.
In this times of economic difficulty, piracy just heaps more pain on companies and their employees, whom do not see the deserved financial return on their endeavours. Piracy is not a victimless act, it affects us all, in the UK we continually complain about offshoring destroying the viability of IT jobs, yet paradoxically many of us are quite happy to illegally download software, that if paid for would have helped support local jobs.
You do realise box, manual and DVD pressing costs mere pennies per copy right?
It's stupid though, what's the RRP in america? $60? We're paying almost double what the US does for games, there's no excuse for this price hike when we're already paying so much more for the same product.
Anyway, way to make people download it. So far all of the CoDs have had plenty of cracked servers, and if the extra development cost hasn't been put into that detail, it's not likely to change. And no, I'm not telling anyone to do illegal things, I'm just saying that rising the price of a game just doesn't go a long way in decreasing the piracy numbers either.
I will pay a premium for certain things I buy from the USA, but that is only the case when I am purchasing something bespoke. Not a piece of plastic with a thin layer of metal embedded in it.
Funny that £55 seems expensive to me now for a game.
Now remember that Virtua Racing had the uber gfx chip and 2 damage models on 2 of the 3 tracks. I'd pay anything for that. :)
Back in the days when carts were still the size of half a house brick, and actually felt like they were worth the money you parted with?
As oppose to now, where it mostly just feels like you got cheated?
I'd start buying games and shipping them to you guys if I wasn't positive I was breaking some sort of law.
I don't see the point of this game at this price. I will just not buy it. I bet it will lasts as long at the last CoD (~7hours).
Nah I will stick to BF 1943, which costs less than £10 and clock on is 400+ hours the years to come before becomes boring.
As I did with the BF2 when put it down few weeks ago. lol.
in what you mean m8 ,i got my moneys worth out of bf2 as well ,i have this pre-ordered from play for £45 and im not happy about playing the extra £5 ,£40 is plenty for a console game and it will hurt them more than us .if they continue to rip us off then we should stop buying there stuff its that simple,it will be illegally downloaded and it will go up because of this price hike there noway around this now .sad but true fact
Doesn't really matter to me anyway, I'll rent it from lovefilm like I do with all games now. If I do like it then I'll get it a couple of months later second hand for peanuts. That'll learn em.
increase I find pretty funny. As for myself the new price is reasonable considering cod comes out with
a new game every yr and a damn good one at that. consoles and pc prices go up so what makes you
think game prices should stay the same yr after yr. so I'll be there cash in hand ready to play!
I waited for CoD4 to drop in price and it took more than a year.
it will genuinely interesting to see how the price hike affects what is one of the most anticipated games of the year
What they forget is that salaries did not increase a single penny for most since lots of companies put a total halt to any and all salary increases due to the economic situation.
55£ for a Game? no way in hell I'm going to pay that, just hope it will hit the bargain bin soon.
Just seen it at play.com for £29.99, well.......thats not too bad but i would still need to read/watch some reviews first.
They're not expansion packs - they're being released as three separate games.
ok
0.o
I mean from 29.99 to 34.99 i would understand but £54.99 come on!! This is only because COD4 was such a HUGE hit and is one if not the best FPS game out there at the moment! YOU ******* money sucking publishers! Give power to the people in my opinion, this is just so unethical.
Why boost the price of a COD series game, why not other games that are being launched?? ppffft!!
Activision just wants more money.
Also, this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h__0_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=modern+warfare+2&x=0&y=0&sprefix=modern+warfa
As for the price, if it comes with the same content of CoD4, its way too overpriced.
CoD4 was a very good game but not worth the full 50€ either. Its just too short.
BTW, wasnt it £40-PC, £55-consoles?
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=2041866&postcount=37
:|
What goods? it is software! - a DVD costs pennies, we never get a proper game manual these days, and the over the top packaging, well that;s their choice for shelf-presence.
My assumption is someone has put their hand up and said "why are PC players paying less than console players?"
I'll tell you why - because we have to constantly patch our games, suffer many crashes, and generally play through a final beta stage.
I'll turn to the dark side and download thanks. Last game I shelled out for (Empire total war) is currently unplayable due to white screen crashes that are being experienced accross the community.
lets go to fnac and see the price of the newest games:
59,99€ for the pc
69,99€ for the consoles
that's £50 for the pc and £60 for consoles, according to current exchange rates.
in dollars: $85 for a pc game and $99 for a console game.
Stranglehold is still at 69,99€ and it came out 2 years ago....
normal edition: http://www.fnac.pt/pt/Catalog/Detail.aspx?cIndex=3&catalog=jogos&categoryN=Jogos&category=pc&scategory=pcEstrategia&product=8414185600153&minIndex=2&pageSize=12&orderBy=cy_list_price&template=Template%20Jogo
=59.99
special edition: http://www.fnac.pt/pt/Catalog/Detail.aspx?cIndex=3&catalog=jogos&categoryN=Jogos&category=pc&scategory=pcEstrategia&product=8414185600160&minIndex=1&pageSize=12&orderBy=cy_list_price&template=Template%20Jogo
=69.99
That works for Sims and special/collectors editions. Regular PC games go for 49,99.
If the publishers wasn't so greedy, aka taking 60%+ of the profits, they wouldn't need to do this..
The first link is for the normal edition, AKA the cheapest one!
The price tag for the Sims and the price tag for the collectors/special editions are the only ones that cost 60, all other regular games cost 50.
ahhhh, ok, thank you for elaborating that in a way that I can understand. :D;)
indeed, regular PC games cost 50 (most of them, for now), that gives us ~$70 and ~£43
that's still a ripoff
I bought CoD4, GTAIV and UT3 when they came out for 50/55$ each, and those are canadian dollars !
yep i remember the days of 50 odd quid snes games, there was even alot of people importing street fighter 2 for £120
I guess the do not want to sell much...
That would result in far more people buying the game at launch, and would certainly limit the imapct of the game being pirated.
Selling at such a low price would help them recoup the development costs quicker, and would net them probably one of the fastest selling games of all time (cha-ching!).
Call me an idiot, but I just can't resist the prospect of getting a pair of working Gen 1 Night Vision Goggles for under £50 (that is, the cost of the Prestige edition, £108 in my case, minus the cost of the Hardened edition), and I'd be buying the Hardened edition anyway since I've been a CoD fan since the original back in 2003, and I really think MW2 will be a true return to form after CoD2-5 were, in my opinion, let downs. CoD:UO was Call of Duty perfected, the Infinity Ward took it back off Gray Matter and ruined it.
In case you hadn't noticed... I'm really excited about getting this game. I think it might rekindle my adoration for the series.
You do know they'll be a cheap tacky pair that will probably see no further than 1 metre in front of your face?
I know exactly what they'll be.
Please don't treat me like a moron.
I don't know how much you know about Night Vision, but I know that it's a lot simpler a technology than I thought until I read up on it the other day. I'm sure Activision could afford to supply some half decent Gen 1 NVGs for their most avid and loyal fans.
Then again... we are talking about Activision here..
keep us informed.
It'll be November before there are any developments to report, but sure.
do a video review :p
I think you may well need to prepare yourself to be disappointed. Take a look at the youtube vid here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSS12iY1X0 and pause a t 3:05, looks suspiciously like a IR led illumator ring on the front of the google which would make these generation Zero, generation 1 NVDs are passive infrared devices.
What you would most likley be getting here, is the same thing that comprises 'night mode' in any 10 year old camcorder.
As for the price, sod that for a game of cricket.
Some how I think it'll be a little better than night-mode on a crappy little DV Camcorder, since it's designed with a single purpose, rather than being tacked onto a device primarily used to record video.
Regardless, I'm not bothered what they're like, I'm just a big fan of the CoD series and I want the merchandise.
Nice first post.
It's not about Activision's Greed. It's about the fact that they know it's such a popular franchise that they can price it that high. It's an extra tenner for christ's sake, you either pay it, or you don't. Get over it.
Yes, it certainly is designed with a single purpose in mind, but it's not the answer you have in mind. The answer is of course to maximise profit margins, to believe anything else would be naive.
These IR googles will only be able to see what the IR Leds can illuminate, which is not very much. This tech was around in WW2.
Still you seem to be a staunch supporter of overpriced trinckets so fill yer boots.
With the £ still rising sharply against the $ i wonder if they still plan on this rediculous idea, wait of course they do, more money for them $$$$$
i have it pre ordered at £23.99
corrected