Is the current economic environment delaying rise in monthly price charges?

dippyzippy

It's been $15 per month for a subscription MMO for a long time now. Costs of hardware are arguably cheaper (faster processors for identical costs) but people aren't, artists, developers, network engineers, technicians, CS.

If there wasn't a credit crunch or so much competition would the monthly charge increase or with a few exceptions is the subscription model at risk of extinction?

LynxJSA

Do you have data to support that a pirce increase would raise revenue or offer a positive long term affect on subscriptions?

I think it has more to do with competing with others in the market, especially in the age of F2P than with the past year or two of economic downturn.

Elsabolts

It looks to me that most games released today are still in a some what beta state and are fixed as time permitts. Examples are AO, AOC, Darkfall, these come to mind.

susanto1228

idk but when they do go up (prices) it makes gw2 that more enticing too me.

Josher

Videogames have breen pretty consistent in price since the 80s.  I haven't paid $60 for a game, EVER.  Never have.  I wait for them to drop to $50 or $40 most of the time.  Same with subscription costs.  Justify the higher fee with a BETTER game.  If not, charge LESS.  I'm not desperate for the games..  Developers need to be desperate for my money.  I won't pay more than the current price unless the game does something truly remarkable to justify the hike.  I don't see that happeneing until we're all on Fiber.  Its all principle.   Developers need to lower cost considering a 4 year old game still blows everything away.  Nothing coming out soon looks to change that.

talismen351

Well when you keep dumping out the same crap year after year why should prices go up? The new games are competing with the older established games which are charging the standard $15/month. How would the newly made games expect to gain customers by offering the same basic game as what people are already playing only charge them more for the game?

Put that along with the fact that F2P games are improving to compete with the monthly sub games. F2P games are beginning to offer as good graphics and gameplay as the P2P market.

So untill a game offers something unique in gameplay, to me that would be Pre-AoS UO or Pre NGE SWG, I wouldn't bother paying an extra amount on a sub.