LogFAQs > #912677641

Fam_Fam posted...

should the iphone 2 be sold now at the same price as when it came out? and adjust for inflation?

the value of things does change, regardless of if the actual product itself is the same.

There's no reason they couldn't try. Would it sell? Almost certainly not, given that better things are available for similar or lower prices, based on the cost of materials and the demand for higher-powered devices. But they would absolutely have the right to try. That said, hardware isn't necessarily the best comparison, since games really don't become obsolete the way hardware does (and those that are succeeded by something that's objectively better in every conceivable way tend to either stop being sold or, indeed, become much cheaper than the successor).

I'm also not talking about keeping it at full, inflation-adjusted price. You'd be hard-pressed to sell any game for over $100 these days (without marketing tactics like carving chunks out to sell as an ultimate edition), let alone a 25-year-old one with graphics that were dated when it came out. I'm talking specifically about the notion that it can't possibly be worth 10 whole dollars, which really isn't much to pay for a game you can reasonably expect to enjoy just as much as anything else on the market. Does that mean you should pay $10 for Earthbound instead of paying less for a comparable game? That's your choice. But insisting that it must be priced below $10 in order to be reasonable is just acting as though you're entitled to have Nintendo's property for your chosen price instead of theirs, and that's not at all reasonable.

Zeus posted...

While it's something of an industry practice to set the prices around a certain point, the ultimate test is really what people are willing to pay.

Exactly. Nintendo is entitled to price their games however they want, and people are entitled to not buy them if they feel the price is unreasonable. People are not, however, entitled to demand that Nintendo sell their games for less than they want to. They're also not entitled to pirate games whose price they feel is unreasonable. You want it, you pay Nintendo's price. You don't want it, you don't get it. It's that simple.

Zeus posted...

If they couldn't rack up customers at that price point, you better believe it would drop.

To be fair, it is Nintendo we're talking about. They're a little out of touch with their customer base, such that I wouldn't necessarily expect them to do that.