don′t complain mine is 150

I think that not having preorder ingame bonuses makes Beth a class act. I hate what bioware did with ME2 and DA2 bonuses and day one DLC for those who didn't preorder.

Everything that they made for Skyrim that's not on the cutting room floor is in the game for everyone. I call that awesome.

Because they have a different marketing environment, different market pressures, a somewhat different target audience demographic, etc.

I expect their game prices will go up with the next console gen. (Unless that takes another 3-4 years, in which case I expect it sooner.) But matching the increase to the console gen shift, would help them sneak it by - making it seem not like a price increase for "the same stuff", but like they're paying $10 for Next Gen Games - Totally Worth It!?.


edit: also, retailers (at least in the US) like to set prices by nice round amounts. So the 50->60 increase is $10 more (a nice, round amount), not 20%. The similarly obvious console increase would be to 70, not 72. Because it's a unit increase rather than a percentage increase.

EA, Bethesda, Valve, CDProjekt, etc., every single game publisher is in this business in order to make money. It's not a charity for underprivileged gamers.

The goal of any pricing decision is to set the price in the sweet spot where you earn the most revenue. If it's too high, not enough people buy it. If it's too low, you earn less profit. Who are we to dictate to any company what price they should set for their games? We influence the pricing by voting with our wallets, by either buying the game or not. It doesn't matter if they decide to set the PC version at $500, the PS3 version at $10 and the Xbox version at $5. They are free to set the price points wherever they want.

Personally I take a much greater offense with all the very short games out there that sell for nearly the same price as Skyrim. Those games that provide much less entertainment value than a TES game are insanely overpriced IMHO. A game that ends up costing $3.75 per hour of entertainment value, even when it is on sale at a discounted price, to me is like a huge slap in the face. Nonetheless, I would not dream of trying to dictate to Valve where to set their pricing for Portal 2. Instead, I simply choose not to buy such ridiculously overpriced games.


Compare the insanely low cost per hour of entertainment value for a game like Skyrim, compared to other games that retail at $30, $40 or $50.

For example, here is a list of some recent games I have purchased and completed during the past few years (still haven't completed Oblivion main quest, but you can see how long it is already):

• Oblivion: $30 / 1200 hours = $0.02 per hour
  
• Civ5: $60 / 500 hours = $0.12 per hour
  
• DA2 + ME2: $60 / 310 hours = $0.19 per hour
  
• FNV: $50 / 300 hours = $0.16 per hour
  
• FO3: $30 / 250 hours = $0.12 per hour
  
• Magicka: $10 / 40 hours = $0.25 per hour
  
• DA:O: $70 / 210 hours = $0.33 per hour

For previous TES games like Morrowind and Oblivion, 300 - 500 hour playthroughs are not uncommon and there are even quite a few people with single playthroughs in excess of 1000 hours. I estimate a much higher replay value for Skyrim than these previous games, due to the following:

• 280 perks, out of which you can select only 70 - 80 allow for greater specialization of each character build (for the first time I'm interested in playing pure warrior and pure stealth characters)
  
• Radiant Story Quests that make each playthrough unique in some ways
  
• AMAZING CHARACTER DESIGNS (at least for the races we've seen screens for: Dunmer, Orc, Khajit, Nord, Redguard) make me want to play the game 10 times so I can try each race.
  
• greater complexity in NPC relationships
  
• lots of new features suggest we may see some truly ambitious mods with Creation Kit
  
• possibly a more dynamic main quest, considering the backdrop of the civil war and the player's involvement with either the Rebel or Empire factions
  
• deeper crafting system providing greater replay value to try different specialist builds

Accordingly, for Skyrim, I'm estimating (personally) 5-10 playthroughs of around 300-500 hours each, spread out over a period of several years, so roughly $0.02 - 0.03 per hour of gameplay at $60 pre-order price.
Skyrim: $60 / 1500 to 3000 hours (estimate) = $0.02 - $0.04 per hour

Consider a game like Portal 2, which is currently on sale for $29.99 via Steam:

Portal 2: $30 / 8 hours = a whopping $3.75 per hour of entertainment value!!

Consider any other game that retails for $50 and provides 40+ hours of gameplay:

Other $50 Games / 40 hours = $1.25 per hour of entertainment value


On the other hand, perhaps in your personal case, maybe you would only play Skyrim for 5 or 10 hours and you could play Portal 2 over and over again for hundreds of hours. If that is the case, then probably Portal 2 is going to be a much greater value for you.

At the end of the day, games are luxury goods, not necessities of life and all game publishers need to remain completely free to set their own prices, regardless of platform, just as we need to remain free to choose whether or not to buy the games at launch, wait for a sale, or never buy them at all.

You're paying way too much
Try importing from Amazon (uk) They've got skyrim there for about 30 euros.

Even short games are cheaper per hour of entertainment than, say, first-run movies, live concerts, hang-gliding lessons, or lapdances.

You get a Pre-order bonus if you pre-order from a non-digital retailer such as Gamestop. you get a pyhsical map which you can hang in your room or something...