What if? 1990, Amiga games selling for $5.99. Piracy?

[Florida]

I wonder if there would have been much piracy of games if you would have been able to buy the game diskette(s), box, manual for $5.99. I find it hard to believe that it would have cost 'that' much to produce even for back then.
 
How often haven't you bought a game, blown 40-50 bucks on one just to get disappointed, right?! Who decided that it was a fair price to charge?
 
Commodore allegedly sold 30 million C64 units. The buyers for software then most certainly were available.

I understand that it cost a lot of money for a software distributor to manufacture games for the whole world. However, isn't that why the software developers would go to a software distributor?
Then why was it so hard to distribute games back then? Plenty of European games never made it to the U.S. market. The same goes for the games out of Japan. Also, not many stores bothered to sell games from what I remember.
 
There should have been a rack with games in each convenience store and some vendor coming by every three weeks restocking.

[nyteschayde]

Just a guess but I think you answered your own question. The games didn't ship because they weren't well distributed to stores. There were probably a lot of factors leading to that; including extra desired profits on the software distributors side (less shipping = less cost) and also probably a bit of "computers are for (games|schools|nerds|big companies), not for personal use"

[TjLaZer]

Yes after buying several games for $40+, saving my hard earned birthday gift/chores money I gave up and developed the "try before you buy" philosophy.  If the game was good and worth it, I bought it.  Worked for me.  Sorry was not going to buy every damn game before having tried to play it and see if it's worth it.  For a while there in the last 80's a lot of places where I lived, allowed you to rent the software for a few days.  I did that and was able to test them and if I liked the game I bought it.

But to answer the question.  Would I have bought more games for $6?  Yes I would of bought a lot more than I did.  The same way that a lot of poeple today are buying worthless and poor excuse of games/apps on the App store--because they are cheap.

[direktorn]

I'm sure a car would sell better if it would be sold for 5.99, but would that eliminate the car theifs?

[royalcrown]

I am offended ! I only buy GOOD apps from the app store

Well, I did delete a few crap ones, I hate that.

Wanna know a really easy way to avoid most horrible apps ?

...use an apple instead of an android device

....their store is 50 times better !

[direktorn]

Google does not care about the quality of the apps or well anything, just look at the fragmented android marked, a HTC device GUI is way different from a Samsung device.

[royalcrown]

Developers like to get paid too. 5.99 might be too low, maybe 7.99 or the famous 9.99 at most.

[A6000]

Games for the CPC464 used to sell at £1.99, £2.99 and £9.99 yet the developers did not starve (as far as I know).

[B00tDisk]

There was tons of shovel-ware advertised in US mags towards the end of popular Amiga support over here in the 'states that was as cheap as that.  Fish disks - which were anywhere from one to ten programs, depending - were a buck ninety-nine.  And they still got pirated.

[stefcep2]

Without knowing the costs of actually getting  a boxed game made, and put on a stores shelf, its not possible to say if the price was or was not too high.

The more hands that touch the product the more expensive it ends up.

And you had demo's of games on magazines to try before you buy.

At the end of the day nothing is cheaper than free.

I was never into Amiga games that much anyway, most of my software was applications, most of which I got on cover disc, some of which I upgraded: eg Wordworth Office, Cinema 4D, Art Effect, Photogenics, ImageFX.  Brilliance 2.0 I payed full retail for.

[J-Golden]

It is really hard to speculate what something costs when all you have is the final product.  Owning a business myself I know how the little things ramp up the cost of the final product.

Take a pizza for example.  The price for the ingredients is only about half of the price.  The other half is employee wages, rent, equipment maintenance, electricity, water, cleaning supplies, taxes, unemployment, wokrmen's comp. and a few other things I can't remember off of the top of my head.

These things are not ussually thought of outside the business world which is why people in general think they are getting gouged.

This doesn't mean people don't inflate prices or try to take advantage of others, but the prices for games, then and now, seem fair in comparison to the work that goes into them.

[psxphill]

I wonder if there would have been much piracy of games if you would have been able to buy the game diskette(s), box, manual for $5.99. I find it hard to believe that it would have cost 'that' much to produce even for back then.

I don't think it would have made a huge difference to piracy, people were pirating budget games on the 8 bits.
 
Shops & distributors received the biggest cut. The publishers/developers were getting around 25% of the retail price and they would need to recover their upfront costs from that.

[Greenfield]

I don't think it would have made a huge difference to piracy, people were pirating budget games on the 8 bits.
 
Shops & distributors received the biggest cut. The publishers/developers were getting around 25% of the retail price and they would need to recover their upfront costs from that.

Seems like the app store model is the way ahead going forward from this but you do miss the boxed games. The printed manuals on some 16-bit products like flight sims were brilliant.

Handing over an Apple, Sony or MS gift voucher isn't the same as a retail box and I pity the games stores that will die out if everything becomes digital download in the future but once again pirates will surely find a way to circumvent DRM controls which is a shame.

[A6000]

If there was an Amiga app store, it might encourage new commercial software to be written.
Small market yes, but the paying customers would be easier to reach.

[danwood]

 Fish disks - which were anywhere from one to ten programs, depending - were a buck ninety-nine.  And they still got pirated.

the Fred Disk disks were public domain, you were allowed to copy them as you liked and share.  
The price that PD libraries charged was just meant to cover the cost of the floppy disk and the postage, that said, many used to add money on too, but copying Fish Disks was not piracy, it was encouraged.