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Arc & Natal Pricing Leaked?

Ubisoft's top man reveals the rather reasonable pricing?
Published 19/01/2010 at 11:30 by cc_star
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Ubisoft’s head honcho Yves Guillemot has been talking to investors about the past year’s performance and their future plans. There is all the usual spiel about focusing on their core franchises (Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell & Prince Of Persia) and rather worryingly “ensuring they can be released more regularly”. There is also promising talk about a renewed focus on the Xbox 360 and Ps3 as they reduce their exposure to the largely unprofitable and highly competitive Nintendo DS platform.

Guillemot went on to say “We will fully support the Natal launch as well as the Sony launch.” Although we know that Ubisoft supporting the two new technologies is probably a no-brainer, he went on to hint at the expected pricing by commenting: “We have lots of good quality products that are coming for the launch of those platforms. It represents a reasonable investment, the equivalent of one full-priced game.”

Yes, that is a bit vague with games selling from £20-£100+ but the commonly accepted price for a game is £40/$60, hopefully there is a discount for bulk buying as Sony are known to have tested two motion controllers for use by a single player.

Source: Gamasutra.

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.

  1. If there’s three good Arc games then £30-40 for an Arc, itself, would be reasonable to me.


    • me too.


      • Is that £40 – £60 with or without a game?


      • That’s what I was thinking – I would think both would have to come with a mini-game collection like Wii Sports, Sony and Microsoft would be crazy to try and sell it standalone.

        What they could do though would be to do bundles with launch games instead though, with a standalone game option if you already have the controller and a standalone controller purchase if you don’t want the games or need extra controllers – this is how Sony have done launches of the SingStar mic, the Buzz Controllers, the Eye (EyePet & Eye of Judgement) and even the Official Headset (having Warhawk, End War, and SOCOM bundles). There will no doubt but a console bundle for new buyers too (which I suspect will be the best overall value way of getting it).

        It’s a bit more difficult for Sony to manage though as it’s not actually one peripheral, it’s two – the Arc and the Eye, and some people will already have the Eye (which on it’s own is about £25-30). They need to be careful not to make it too confusing for the average non-core gamer to purchase…


      • A good choice would be do 2 bundles.
        One with an existing game which will work with the Arc which the customer can decide on (either LBP, Res 5 or EyePet or arc play/sports etc…). A new LBP GOTY bundle would go down well.

        A second bundle would be be a standard hardware bundle of a pseye and 2 arcs for those that already have compatible games.


    • Ooo, fair point. I actually meant the Arc on its own but realise I have the Eye already. Cripes. Let’s see:

      • £60 for Arc, Eye and bundled (PSN sized/type) game to show things off
      • Arc & Eye on their own (together but without games) £40
      • Arc on it’s lonesome (as I have an Eye) £25

      Then you’re off into usual territory where a standalone (but suitably sized Bluray) game is £30 to £40 or Twelvety Five Gabillion if it’s an Activision title.


      • If thats the pricing I’d be sold on the idea as I already have a pseye and some of the compatble games already announced (LittleBigPlanet, EyePet, Flower, Pain, High Velocity Bowling)


  2. Seems reasonable. He could mean the suggested price for things like MW2 though… £60 seems a more likely price to me, but I don’t know.


    • One of the whole points of the system is local multiplayer gaming… therefore you’ll need at least two, although Sony have said some of their most interesting testing was when one person used two controllers, meaning you could need 4 as a minimum. At £60 each they can forget it being a runaway success, although there may be room for a pricedrop on them by the time Natal hits the market much later in the year


      • I’m sure a read somewhere before that 4 was the maximum you could use on a ps3. I’ll try and find it.


      • Found it:

        “Paul Holman: You can programmatically set the colour as well. It’s RGB, so there’s the full spectrum of colour. And you can use up to four of these things at the same time, depending on your game design, so it’s quite interesting” It’s from an interview with Eurogamer.

        Pricing wise would the suggested £60 not also include a ps eye which you’ll need? £30 for the pseye and £30 for each Arc sounds fairly reasonable and means an Arc would be a little less than a dualshock controller or a wiimote


      • Don’t forget you only need one Eye though – which is about £30, so potentially the actual Arc controllers would only be £20 each (making £50 total), potentially if Sony have decided a dual handed solution is the way to go (and I hope they have) then ‘one’ Arc controller could actually consist of two halves, one for each hand, this would mean a full setup with 4 controllers would only be £70, which compared to things like Rock Band and Guitar Hero etc is very reasonable. Of course I’m just wishful thinking!

        Also, if some of the rumours about it’s functions are true it’s likely Sony would cease production of the SingStar mics and the Buzz Controllers – unifying them under a single Arc controller scheme (and I’m all for having less plastic extras cluttering up the gaming world!). Thinking about it the extra visual input/output of a light could be put to good use in games like Buzz…


  3. Whilst I’m looking forward to what the Arc has to offer I’m not really fussed about motion controls at the moment. If a game comes along that looks like it is a) fun and b) worth the extra monies then I might be tempted. I wouldn’t pay that if all we get for the time being is novelty compendiums and sports tie-ins.


  4. Not sure I would dish out £60 for a controller even if it came with 3 games. It’s looking much better than Natal, but still, not sure this will be any good. Can only wait until more info is released before making a full comment I think.


    • what about £40… which is the more normal cost of a game


      • Controllers are normally £35 each and it doesnt appear to have much more technology in the arc compared to a dualshock controller of wiimote. It appears to be the camera and ps3 that work out where the controller is. The Arc seems little more than a reshaped dualshock controller with a glowing orb on the top.

        If Sony can get 2 arcs and pseye on the market at £70/£80 total (the price of wii fit) then they’ll already fit the current pricing models out there. Whether the hardcore audience would spend that is another matter.


  5. lets face it, sony are going to need to sell these so £40 for the arc-cade bundle & no more than £25 per extra handset or few will bother in my opinion.


  6. Nintendo are top of the year round sales charts because they bundle a game with a peripheral

    Wii Fit, Wii Play, Mario Kart etc… and the fact they are top of the charts creates so much publicity that it in turn leads to more sales

    I never understood why Sony didn’t bundle a cheap game with a DS3 for this reason, I hope they’ve learnt their lesson and bundle the Arc with a game, thus qualifying it for the charts if the price is right (like Wii Play with Wii remote is only £2-£3 dearer than a Wii remote on its own)

    The ideal bundles would be
    Arc + PS3Eye + Game Collection
    Arc + Game Collection
    Arc standalone

    I doubt they will bundle 2 Arc’s together because why have 1 sale when you can have two with greater margins, nobody else bundles 2 controllers


    • Sony used to bundle 2 controllers with most consoles. They many treat the arc in the same way. They’ll want the bundle to seem good value for money. £50-60 for one controller or £70-80 for 2? Also if they can get customers to commit to 2 controllers they have more of an interest in buying more games for it. There’s also no better advertising than someone buying it then playing it 2-player (or more) with someone that doesn’t have it.


      • I would have thought they’d follow the Wii business model, which is the whole reason they’ve developed this in the first place.

        The margins on accessories these days is the one of the few things that profitable in gaming so I doubt they’re going to errode that margin by discount bundling them.

        Although, that model may not suit us gamers it suits the manufacturers and retailers perfectly


      • But Sony want to sell a lot of games to every owner. Something the wii hasn’t managed too well. Sony can’t approach it in the same way as the wii as its not (as far as we know) coming bundled with a ps3 as standard


  7. I’ll just be needing Arc (if it turns out its not called Arc we’re gonna sound stupid) as I’ve got the eye already.

    But I hope Sony do a sports compilation or something like that. Its something I definately miss from the Wii even for novelty factor.


  8. So, still no news on a “Nunchuck” style device?
    I won’t get this until there is one of those.


    • Hold the controller in your other hand? You still get the analog and actually get more buttons too. There’s a video floating around of someone playing RE5 doing that, it doesnt look too bad actually.


      • I tried it and get slippage

        If that their plan, I won’t be getting one.



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