I was playing the new Angry Birds game the other day, the racing game "Angry Birds Go". This game allows you to buy new cars for real money. The game itself is free, so they've clearly got to make money somehow, so allowing people to buy additional carts is quite a nifty idea. However, the sheer price of some of these carts is phenomenally expensive. Take a look at this screen shot of one of the cars you can buy. And this is not, in any way, photoshopped;
Yes. That says the car costs £34.99. That's not imaginary in game money, it's actual real life proper money. To place this in context, a PS3 copy of GTA5 on Amazon is currently selling at £33.00
And of the levels I've unlocked, you can buy a further two more at £34.99, two at £6.99 each (advertised as "50% off"!!!), and two at a much more reasonable £1.99 each. To access all these carts would cost you £122.93.
And that's with only half the tracks unlocked. If we extrapolate that the remaining half of the game has a similar number of similarly priced carts, that would cost you £245.86 just too access all the carts in one game! By way of comparing how ludicrous this is, you can currently buy a PS3, with GT6 and The Last of Us for £199.99 from Amazon. I know which I'd rather spend my money on...
This doesn't even touch on the other transactions in the game which allow you to buy crystals to allow you to upgrade your car quicker (you can earn these racing in the game) for prices ranging from £2.99 for 200 crystals up to £69.99 for 6500 crystals. This latter one is somewhat cheekily stated to be "Best Value". Hmm... I don't know on what planet £69.99 for a bunch of crystals could ever be described accurately as "best value"...
But, it's not just this game. There are games all over the place that have a similar pricing structure for their in game purchases. It is increasingly becoming the norm that games companies are charging such silly money for things that are only of use in the game.
Surely a better model would be the "pile it high, sell it cheap" principle. I wonder how much more revenue would be generated by a lot of smaller transactions? Candy Crush Saga does seem to get it completely right in that every time I've come across a chance to spend money in that game, it's never been anything as like as high as £69.99. I think the highest I've seen in £2.49. I think. These are amounts that are small enough to tempt people to spend to get those extra power ups, and to get extra lives, and to get on to the next batch of 15 levels...
To its credit, as well, you don't have to spend a single penny on Candy Crush Saga to proceed. I've done all 65 owl balancing levels and I'm up to level 225 in the main game, and not a penny spent...
This model is clearly working for them as they're churning out new levels at a fair old rate, and getting out new games.
I'd be very interested in hearing what the justification is for these ludicrous prices for in game content...
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The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Tiny Death Star are perfectly enjoyable and playable without spending money but their in game purchases are mad too. Top prices I've seen were £60+ for in-game currency.
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