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Question about game prices and perception of quality

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Pacman for the Atari 2600 was ~50-70 bucks back in 1982. Thats like $180 in todays money and that was a shit game. Just sayin.

Limited choices. And pinballs cost a lot before that. And I paid $500 for a 300MB hard drive that was far under half the going price IIRC.
 
A month ago I was talking with a friend from USA about my plans to develop games. When I said that I could develop a game for 15-20% of the cost of production in USA/Europe, and then sell it for just $20, he told me that I should not do so. "If I see two things, one costing $40 and the other costing $20, I automatically consider that the cheaper one has lower quality. You should not sell your game for less than other similar titles."
What do you think about this? Does game price influences your perception about its possible quality?

That thought process might work for tangible goods (The $1 oil pan I got from the dollar store works just as well as the $10 one I have from autozone though) I dont think it can be applied to digital goods. I dont look at it like this, you cant compare the quality of games without actually playing them, or watching them be played. With that said, if a game costs under $1, its that way for a reason..........

$30 is probobly the sweet spot, of course if the game was released for $30 I would likely only spend $15 on it anyway, I never pay full price for games 😛
 
game price does not influence my perception about its quality given you have platforms like Steam running 50-75-90% "off" sales. either way, all of this is BS - the product is worth what is your customer is willing to pay. if I am not willing to pay $80 for some super special edition of 8 hour game, I would not pay it but may consider when it gets under $10 territory (and it will). similarly, for me, products like Total War where I played over 1000 hours in Warhammer alone and have a lot of fun, worth pay 'full price' for.

another item here - the cost of development corresponds very little with cost of living unless you are renting out the office somewhere, formally hiring lots of labor ,etc. otherwise, if you think you can develop something for 1/7 (15%) or some made up US cost of production, you may or may not know all of the costs involved. it costs very little for someone to do it in US/EU as well...

and finally, if you want to develop game -> go for it!
 
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