I may be alone in this but I don't see a big problem with the VC pricing. Some are a bit high but nothing ridiculous. I will gladly pay twice as much for Legend of Zelda as I would some nice horse armor. $10 for Super Mario 64? I will certainly get more enjoyment out of playing this again after 8 years then I would by buying John Denvers Christmas Album for $14 (which I DO plan to buy) or American Psycho DVD for $14 (which I will also be buying). I mean relatively speaking these games are a big value for the amount of entertainment you are getting. You could get Sonic the hedgehog, or 16 minutes of music off itunes for science sake. Where is the problem?

What exactly IS a reasonable price for The Legend of Zelda?

It's not really how much is reasonable for Zelda, the question is "What's reasonable for a 20 year old game that cost them close to $0 to put on the VC?" Not to mention I already have Zelda, on my NES.

NES games should be 3-4 bucks MAX, and I dont think anything pre N64 should be over 5.

""What's reasonable for a 20 year old game that cost them close to $0 to put on the VC?" "

Actually, this is absolutely NOT the right question.
Go to Best Buy and try to explain that and 20-30 year old Led Zeppelin or Beatles album should be $4 because it costs Polygram/Virgin Records (or whoever) $0 to make. They will laugh at you. Actual cost has little to do once you are talking about entertainment from the past. How much does it cost them to put Seinfeld on DVD? $0 (less the cost of the the media) but Season one costs like $30.


The point is simply this. Actual cost has NOTHING to do with value when it comes to old entertainment. To expect otherwise is silly.


Sure, I wish I could bring my cassette of Vanilla Ice and get a new copy on CD but thats never gonna happen. If people want video games to go mainstream they need to start treating them like mainstream revenue sources for the companies that own the rights or it will never happen.

"I can tell you it costs a hell of alot of time to put seinfeld on DVD. Encoding, authoring is both time intensive and expensive."



You're kidding right? I had about 100 episodes of Seinfeld on VCR and I put them all on DVD with menus and background music in 2 weekends just for the cost of the media. (I already owned the authoring software that cost me $79). If you are talking about outtakes and special features/interviews, ok, those add some cost to find and sort through, but if thats the case, then use a different TV series for my example, one without a lot of extra content because they all cost about the same. The point is that the cost is irrelevant, and it is. I sell stuff that costs me $5-10 for $150 every day for my job. Why? Because thats the going rate. My customers don't know, nor should they know, what my cost is. All that matters is what it does for them and what thats WORTH. These games are no different. Value is not a mathematical function of cost. If it were, we would pay 10-20 percent over cost for everything, but we don't. Some industries charge 30-50% over cost while others make money at 5-7%.


If $1 is ok for downloading a 3 minute 30 year old song, I don't see a problem with games costing $5-10.


Its just confusing to us the gamer because we had these games years ago and we assume a dimished value to the point where it almost reaches zero. Unfortunately, the reality is that the value dimishes to a rough floor at which time, nostalgia, collectors and history start to increase it again.


Like I said before video games are going mainstream, so they don't exist in a vacuum. You have to compare them to other forms of entertainment to calculate their value. How much are you getting for you money irrespective of cost.


Also, the same guy, netphantom above admitted on another post that he has bought multiple additional faceplates for his 360. They typically cost $15-$30. So the same guy that hates paying $5 for Legend of Zelda will be $20 for a 30 cent piece of plastic. This might seem ironic, but really it goes to show that we as gamers don't value old games as much. We'll see if that is right in the end or if Nintendo is hitting the right spot with its pricing. If it's prohibitively high, they will probably bring it down eventually.

I actually have a huge amount of love and value for retro games. I have a 2600 on top of my PS2 right now. The faceplates are in no way connected to games. I buy them because I'm a collector, and have a nice office filled with gaming memoribilia.

But if you want to go with that analogy, let's do it. 20 bucks for something I could sell, trade, give-away, take to a friends house to use, lend it out. All things I can't do with something bought from any online service, VC included. It's suddenly a one way street. I am limited as to what I can do with it. It's not the same level of ownership as having a copy of it in my hand. The faceplate, I buy it it's mine. I can use it forever or light it on fire.

I don't know about 333, but for me the level of ownership should have a part to play in the pricing. It's why I dont shop @ itunes.

It's one of those agree to disagree things. But don't try to tell me I dont appreciate old games, it couldn't be any less true.

And for the record, as a DVD author at a major video house, encoding and authoring on a professional level is quite different that doing it at home or in a small office with a 79 dollar program. I'm not knocking it, cause they work pretty well. But a DVD, using existing content, will still cost tens of thousands of dollars. And the equipment costs hundreds of thousands. Just a little FYI

What you're saying has merit, particularly if you are buying VC games with the intent to light them on fire.


Is a VC game worth less because I can't insert it in may ass should I decide I want to? According to your logic, yes (and I agree with this as absurd as it may sound). Unfortunately, people can have all sorts of different ideas of what they want to do with things so that argument isn't entirely valid. Personally, I don't think a car is worth much because I can't email it to a friend. I would really like to email my car to a friend but since I can't, I don't think it should cost so much.


And I never implied people don't "appreciate" old games. I am saying people don't "value" them, which its clear you don't value older downloaded games, which is fine. To say you don't value them is different then saying they cost too much or aren't worth it. Since thats subjective, its silly.


As for the DVD authoring thing, I worked on several projects in college at the local TV station and moving content to DVD is not that time consuming or expensive. Sure the hardware is expensive, but this is equipment TV/Movie studios have already so it's not like they had to buy it to put seinfeld on DVD. Defray the cost of this equipment over the number of DVDs they produce and sell and I guarantee you its cost is similar to that of the media its on. Thats why the stores are flooded with TV shows on DVD lately, they are making a killing off it. There is almost no cost and there is a high perceived value. I totally agree with this principle and I'm happy to pay for my stargate SG-1 seasons. (I just bought season 9 Sweet!) And if you get a chance, go buy a season of Dukes of Hazzard on DVD. I promise you I could do a better job with my 79 dollar program.


Anyway, my only point is that you can't use the perceived cost of a VC game to determine its value. If you want to say the VC game doesn't have value because you can't wear it as a hat, thats fine, that holds more water than saying we should pay X because it costs Y to make.

Ok, I'm done.