Especially since they are also on digital domain, and you can use code or actual in-site currency done with activities to buy videogames!, Nintendo Power sadly will go/ or has gone out

They stopped making Nintendo Power years ago. Actually, my first sour was back when they closed down the NSider forum.

I was not around for this. Can you provide link? I feel like reading something entertaining.

Oh Hijack, my buddy my pal, it was 6 or 7 months ago and it's late. :P That could take me hours to find.

Nothing that can be done then. :P

I think that games which are 'ahead of their time' are the ones that live on to be remembered, revered and even sometimes re-purchased.

I think that "Planescape: Torment" is among one of those, along with (although you don't see see it here), Interactive Fiction.

I suppose if you grow up playing simple text adventure games and eventually point and click, you can appreciate them much more.

I really liked the Infocom games a lot and what set it apart from all the other older "verb-noun" games was the ability to parse your English input, determine sentence structure and break out multiple actions. The games even had NPC's which worked off a timer (number of turns) and moved from room to room and appeared to have intelligence.

Even better, one was allowed to use their imagination to view what they read (which was usually fairly detailed) and one's mind's eye was usually the best for imagining the graphics.

Also, games that influenced others usually withstand the test of time... just like good old books or comics that are made into movies. :)

Cheers,

Joe

Yep, I've been observing that for quite some time now. Regardless of the release price of a game, lets use $60 as a common standard baseline - it is my observation that no matter how hyped a game is, and also no matter how well received it is after release, how good the reviews are, the overwhelming majority appear to get discounted to $40 or 66% or less of their initial price within 6 months, and are usually 33-50% of their initial price or less within 12 months. Furthermore, most of them are $5-10 within 12-18 months, again even if they were game of the year type "wow, holy shit!" awesome game releases. I'll cite Tomb Raider 2013 and Bioshock Infinite as two examples of this - both IMHO eye dropping awesome games in every way, both GOTY, both $10 or less in 12 months or so despite releasing at $50 and $60 originally, and now they're regularly available for $5 on sale or in bundles etc. Very few games manage to be so good as to be able to hold on to a high price tag for very long at all in today's highly saturated video game market. There are just such a tremendous wealth of titles out there and a steady garden-hose stream of them coming out every day that few games hold people's attention for that long really. I think there just is not enough room in the market for more than a few dozen games to have that kind of holding power either for popularity over time, or price holding power. Most of Blizzard's games are an example of games that have both consistently. Each major publisher appears to have between 1-3 titles or so that pull it off, but even most of their big success games end up $10 within 18 months no matter how awesome they are.

It's so true it is practically something to take to the bank, and is one of the reasons I never pay full price for new releases and instead just exercise patience and wait 6-18 months where I know I can pick it up in a big seasonal sale or a game bundle or similar. I think that it is just the nature of the massive number of games and the steady stream that forces prices down almost universally within short time frames, it's just the nature of the current industry and few titles are going to resist that I believe.

I'm ok with it though, I think that in today's climate publishers _have_ to know this and plan their financials accordingly and their support cycle, etc. get the product to market on time and be popular enough to get an ROI on the title before it trickles off and they are working on their next investment property.

Now for a game suggestion for your list... hrm... I think I'll have to go with...

ArmA 3 - came out Sept 13, over 17 months ago and the current list price is still $66.49 for the base game, or $71.99 for the Deluxe version. Now _that_ is staying power!

Companies price stuff in a way that produces a good steady stream of profit generally. If they have it too high and people don't buy it then they don't make money, so when they see the money start to choke, they'll dip the price down a bit, and they'll also do the odd discount promo then keep the same regular price as before. In the case of Blizzard - and they are somewhat of a special case, every game they've ever released has been instantly on fire and in high demand pretty much across the board. They've produced more cream of the crop titles than any other company in the same timeframe I believe, at least at the same level of quality and longevity and praise amongst gamers so their games have higher value to people, including nostalgia. I still play the original Starcraft with a few buddies from time to time, and Warcraft 3, and we even played Diablo 1 about 2 years ago for a month or so.

Blizzard doesn't even need to sell these games as they probably are a small dent in the ocean compared to what they make off of WoW, D3 and SC2 these days, but there is demand for them and the pricing of such things is not really based on how old something is, but rather on what value people put on it and what people are willing to spend and what a company expects cashflow wise for their effort, and finding where those factors all intersect, including any ongoing maintenance costs etc. If they're charging those prices for those old games I think we can be assured that there are hordes of gamers out there still excited about these games and willing to pay that price to play them, whether it is because they are nostalgic old gamers like many of us here are, or they're new and wanting to try those old classic titles out.

I think the prices of video games are ultimately set by the end customer and their willingness to spend the money in the end. If something is overpriced for 1 person and stays that way, then there are probably 100 people out there who think it is a fair price for every 1 that doesn't. If 99% of people think something is overpriced *and* wont pay that price, then the price goes down on the other hand. :)

most nintendo games, blizzards games and call of duties

I played and beat the first one several times on GameCube, XBox and PS2. PS2 version was the best b/c of the dualshock's analog buttons for aiming.

But after my last playthrough, I decided it was time to shell out the forty bucks needed to get the second. I don't like #2 as much as #1 right now, but I'm still working my way through it. It's still fun, of course. But not 5 times more fun than BGDA1 (which costs 5 times less :D).

Yeah, I must agree with this. I thought it was nostalgia mostly... Maybe I should return to my DA saga playthrough. Just to be sure :D

All of the above. I'd add X-Rebirth, one game that I was very expectant of, but I've put it off because of the poor reviews. I was thinking of buying it when after 2-3 years it hits about 5 euros in sales, but I see no chance for that yet.
Another thing that anoys me is the Football Manager/Fifa etc games which never get cheap as the next version will be again 60 euros and the older ones won't be for sale anymore and the highest discount they get is about 50% just before the newer one arrives. So a collective FU EA and Sega.

hi, that is kinda awkward very old stuff that stays at a certain prices.

BUT maybe its a comfort that a lot of other distributors (if not all)
do exact the same thing ....

I dont know for sure but GG(gamersgate) claims these listprices are up to the developers/ distributors


a nice example of a older casual game (2012) on Gamersgate drm free version (also on lots of other sites with drm)
is this one:

did some googling

amazon (drm loaded i guess)
settlement colossus Price: $6.95

gamersgate (drm free)
settlement colossus Price: EURO 9.95


thats quite a difference, so that game is on my wishlist and i will only buy that at 6 euros not a cent more
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alawar (default drm but some are free of drm (on GG)
i dont see a price on the alawar site
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and there 1000's of old games that differ in price and sometime the price is a bit to high


But since everyone is doing this, i have no problems GOG has it also
as long as old games dont rise in price its no problem

lets take this game as an example

current prices
PLANESCAPE TORMENT €8.89 or $9.99 in dollars
(excellent game i had it on retail when it fist came out)


if this became like 10,89 11.99 or even more then....
but if the stay at current prices for 100's of years i havent got any problem with that


so as long every list price stays as it is now.... even for antique games its alright by me :D

lol a very nice example i had d1 and d2 plus LOD (cd) and they were the best
in my opinion d3 sux.... they would have to give me a substantial amount of cash (euros please)
if i were to accept the game .

There was physcial cd/dvd on 1st release , not any longer but it was as cd/.dvd released.

Anything by Blizzard.

I agree. That base price is way too high considering its age and the kind of game it is.
It really doesn't make much sense considering it has been bundled 5 times before for pennies.