Lunchtime Discussion: Costs

We all know gaming is an expensive hobby. Exceptionally expensive when you think about it. Not as expensive as collecting cars or houses, or if you’re really in the super rich; countries, but as a hobby for someone on a relatively normal income goes it’s quite high up the list. Now consoles themselves are of course the biggest outlay. They are expensive, but they’re considered as a kind of ‘core’ expense of the whole enterprise, you expect to shell out large sums of money every now and then. Of course there are the games as well, but again you expect to pay out £30-£50 somewhere between a few times year to a few times a month depending on your funds.

However this generation, and a little in the last, we’ve had more costs piled onto us as gamers than ever before. If you own an Xbox 360 you of course have the recurring cost of Xbox Live, something that doesn’t work out as that much if you pay it on a yearly basis but still a cost that only exists on the 360 for now. Of course if you’re a PS3 owner you’ve got it free for now, although you may choose to upgrade to PSN Premium when it’s inevitably announced next week at E3.

Of course some people feel that the cost of games have gone up, although I’m not sure that they’ve gone up on average between this generation and last. However that’s only if you’re buying the normal edition of games. I’m sure in past generations we never had any of these new special editions of games that are floating about  now, you never used to be able to buy 3 or 4 different versions of the game you’d wanted for months on end to get your hands on. Of course DLC, another cost that’s cropped up recently, wasn’t available to ‘add value’ to special editions of games, meaning that they were harder to justify than they are now.

And now of course there’s the newest part of paying, EA’s Online Pass scheme. So with all the other little costs that are added on, maybe you decide to save a little money by buying a used game. Of course EA decided to recoup the money they’ve lost by you buying the game used rather than new by charging you for the game’s online content. From a pure consumer point of view this is kinda sucky if you were trying to save a little cash, from someone who actually cares about the industry it makes some sense.

So do you feel that we’re being asked to pay more and more for our gaming experience? Of course we can still get the core experience for a fairly fixed price, but the add ons seem to be growing and growing. Whether it’s the PS Move, Natal/Wave or the wealth of plastic instruments we’re asked to shell out for with music games, what we’re asked to pay does seem to be on the up. I guess the real question is are we getting value for money?