The Weekend Debate: The Price is Right?

It all depends on what you Value really, is it Quality or Quantity you want? I always go with Quality even if its expensive or short because I would rather be entertained for that time than play something that is mediocre and long ending with me getting bored and never finishing it.

Does gaming give you good value for money?
I’m a little holding back on this one since I usually buy the more populair/known games.
Like comment 50, gaming is an excellent value for my money.
As long it has the right amount of content which are
A story mode of atleast 6/7 hours (not counting DLC)
Either Co-op and/or multiplayer modes.
mini games would be a + for value aswell.
A game of €60 should atleast have these reguirements
With Sony I’m not worried about this. The games developed by Sony always include the right amount of content for me .
Platinum games is a great thing for me being a student who has trouble finding work. (are you still looking for more employees?)
But I thought the original RE5 the one without the DLC, was not good value for my money

Gaming is expensive but does it worth the high price tag? It all depends on the game. A game with a fun, addictive and amazing multiplayer will worht it as you will spend 100+ hours on it. But it doesen’t have to have multiplayer. Any quality RPG worhts it. Skyrim is already pre-ordered for me. It will be as long as I wantet to be. A game like Uncharted 3 worth the full price. I pre-ordered it. Not only it has an amazing story, a cinematic experience but it has a fun, solid multiplayer and a awesome co-op.

Conten what matters. I wont pay £40 for a game that does not reach a imagenery standard for me. The standard will be based on the developers of that game, my personal taste and also reviews. For games like this I would even be happy to pay £50-55 if I know that it won’t be a trade-in after a month. That I know I will keep and play. That I know I will get back to after completion, Quality and Content is all that matters! Thanks

i dont think we have ever had it so good . i remember altered beast was 50 odd quid back in the day , when i got it off of plus i flnished it in less then half hour . not only has the price of games dropped , they last alot longer , ive clocked nearly 200 hours in black ops multi player . i never spent that long playing sonic . even games that are considered short last for 10 hours

another example psn games , back in the day they would have been full price games , now they cost us 7.99

The only thing that bothers me now about games , is some companies do try and milk it “cough’ cough’ capcom ‘ cough’ ‘cough’ but other then that weve never had it so good

For me personally gaming is value for money because I read up on the games I want. Some new releases I know I must have on that day just because they need to be in my life as soon as possible. But if you can wait a few months prices can drop by at least a tenner. Even more so if you shop around online and get second hand games. Quite a few of my games are second hand from Ebay. Cant even remember which ones are because they are all in immaculate condition.
If you arent sure about a game Id suggest renting it. Hell of a difference between £4 and £40 when you are playing a stinker of a game.

since ive owned a ps3 . ive never payed more then 35 pound for a game . except for today i pre ordered MW3 hardened edition but that was only because this year ive brought 3 map packs . so with the 20 new dlc maps they have planned for release plus the elite thing there doing , i shoud get my 65 pound back eventually , unless the game is pants , then im screwed , but i think its worth the risk

Video gaming certainly is expensive. At least here at Portugal, where a brand new PS3 game costs around 70 Eur. Ouch! Is it worth? Well, it all comes down to how much you will enjoy it. And in this matter, we are all different.
For me, a game like the Uncharted series, which combines an enjoyable gameplay with a powerful plot, is well worth that amount. But I wouldn’t pay even 7 Eur for FIFA or PES. Sorry mates, I’m not a big soccer fan, which I think makes me some kind of endangered species in Europe. Then there’s another thing that bugs me. The same game, which sells for 70 Eur for the PS3, only costs 50 for the PC. What’s up with that? This is enough motive for me to only buy games for my PS3 system, that haven’t been released for the PC; GTA IV being the exception.

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So, in my opinion, if you like what a particular game has to offer, if you know you’ll be enjoying it for many hours and (likely, most important) you can afford it, you should buy it, even pre-order it. If not, well, maybe you should wait a while until it drops price, maybe go Platinum.
Generally speaking, I think Gaming gives me good value for money, *if* I choose wisely. Over the years, I’ve spent many hours living amazing adventures and learning a lot while playing video games. They raised my awareness into miscellaneous subjects in which I am now interested. If you do the math, I’m certain that you’ll share my opinion.

Games represent great value for money in my opinion.

Friends used to tell me that spending £30-40 on a game was a waste of my money, but thought nothing of spending £8 on a cinema ticket to watch a 90 minute film.

However, when you consider that games nowadays offer tens, hundreds or even thousands of hours, that ratio of money spent to hours of potential use and enjoyment is generally unmatched by other forms of media.

The question is ‘does gaming give ME value for money?’ and the short answer is yes. Mainly because I am a tight fisted b*****d! lol. 60 quid for Tiger Woods 12? you’ve got more chance of my performing a lewd act on John Prescott!!

A bit late with this one but one thing that puzzles me is why people view video games against a cost per hour – no-one does that with other media like books, films or even TV subscription costs. I’ve bought games for full price and got so much pleasure out of them they were worth the money (Uncharted is an obvious example but there’s loads more). I’ve picked up other games cheaply and the opposite is true. Aliens vs Predator cost me £10 and I played it for 10 hours on hard. It was a poor game so not worth even the cheap price.

It comes down to individual financial and time constraints. In the run up to Christmas there’ll be a few games I’ll be more than willing to pay full price for and am confident they’ll be worth every penny – Uncharted 3, Batman and Battlefield among them. If we want to see the industry thrive and innovate then enough of us need to pay a good price for the good stuff. The second hand market is important but games development is an expensive business and they need our financial support.

i guess i’m gonna jump into the disucussion abit late too. BUt does gaming give you value for money. absolutely wether it be a .99p iphone game or a £40 full release. You can look at all aspects of it and that fact in requires individual tastes etc but as a whole industry regardless of platforms there in nothing that give the same amount of interactive entertainment.
Take the board game monopoly for example, yeah it’s fun you can have a blast but does it grab you imaginatively. Has anyone played monoply and gone yeah that experience made me feel like a real car driving through expensive boroughs of london while making a fortune???. It’s not to say monopoly is bad but it just doesn’t imerse you like gaming does. Be it pacman or uncharted 3 when you lay down you money on a video game on any platform you know one way your gonna get an imersive experience wether its good or bad.

i just wanna add that even if you do buy a *bad* game you still experience it better than you would say a bad movie.

I think most people though will boil the question down to the simple cost factor though and as i said before good or bad it’s still value for money when wieghed up with drunk nights people can’t remember, expensive trips to the cinema. (it’s like what £10 to see 2hr movie that you can’t watch again) and the list could go on. In terms of a hobbie to it’s still fairly inexpensive compared with other hobbies too.

i wounder if james and judge make it this far into the comments.

I guess PSblog employees won’t have to worry about the costs especially over christmas with that extensive Sony office archive. lol

i myself buy alot of games recently been playing Trinity Universe and payed £34.99 i brought it for the long hours it does and has given me and alot of other gamers here aswell also brought Dark Souls for the challenge,
The Price of gaming is pretty decent these days i would gladly pay 42.99 for a new release or 36.99 in some cases and i do buy the odd game off the PSN store as well but i do sometimes buy games preowned aswell to save some money when i need it the most, but mostly i buy the game for the experiance

I think it’s odd how many people equate number of hours gameplay divided by cost of game equals value for money. I think that gaming offers excellent value for money. For this generation of consoles the biggest thing for me is the online stores. Games that previously wouldnt have seen the light of day on a console are now available. It has brought back the arcade nature of gaming with the store titles on offer and these types of game had been in decline since ps2, and all at a cut price offering. I’ll happily pay £5 or £50 but the value comes in the quality of game and I think that quality is of a high standard for this generation.

It pretty much depends on what is the price.. a game at the release price, the price a couple months later (or used), a psn game, a full price title at the psn store or discounts at the psn…

full games on psn are often overpriced, they are way more expensive in most stores, also this starts to get a little better… psn titles normally get you a okay value for the money, and there is definitly nothing to complain about the special offers or also plus

for the normal retail titles its hard to say, after a few months they are meanwhile at a price, where you can really complain, even if its a shorter title… for the release price its a little different.. there are games that are worth every cent and entertain you for a while…

I definitly don’t buy two sort of games at the release.. the ones with a small single player campaign, as well as the ones that have DLC’s ready for the release.. paying full price your done witzh after just some hours (if your not into mp, like I am) is a little too less for a full price game… games that release a dlc witb the starte – I simply feel fooled and cheated, cause something was c ut out of the game and I definitly don’t pay the full price for that…

i won , i won..wooooooooohooooooo

thanks

@106

The commodore 64 (1982) came before the commodore 16 (1984).

@ jfontyman

Glad someone else cleared this up

I read alot of Retro Gamer & Anthology magazines & was pretty sure I was right!

Googled just to make sure & Wikipedia cleared things up! This site will do: http://www.old-computers.com/search/default.asp

Sorry, use this link instead: http://www.old-computers.com

Type “commodore” within the search section & the site will clear things up

I don’t think James even took the time to read the comments of all contributers and it shows how pointless these weekend bebates have become. Winners judged by how many words they put in their little essays. IMO

Anybody had their prize code yet? I won one, but am still waiting. If not I will check in tomorrow, maybe the team got busy.

Videogames today offer such a big diversity and dynamic experience that is very hard to experience them the best way possible. By this I mean, what does the user really want? Quantity? Quality? In the middle of such a global crisis, what can the developers do to satisfy the most gamers delivering the best experiences possible? In my opinion, the regular costumer (like me) or even the hardcore gamer prefers to spend a bit more money on games that play the best.
The reason is because games represent dreams, they make us feel like we are actually doing something that it was never possible on real life. They are therefore more than a fun-only thing. When I was a bit younger, I was (and still am) in love with cars. Then what should I do to feel and live my dream? Play a quality videogame!
If I am smart, games definitely worth the price of admission 

@273 I havent got mine either, guess James is a tad busy

thanks James

@Caw04, James does not judge the entries, an independent judge from the company that supplies that weeks prize does. James does state this in the introduction and also implies that this weeks judge is female. I myself have not won yet, but I still enjoy the debate regardless. I don’t even want Plus+ (ironically it is because I don’t believe it to be good value! lol) It is the taking part that counts and not the winning.

Awesome! Thanks so much to whoever liked my post enough to award it a code. Goodbye bandwidth, hello Uncharted 3 beta.

Was going to express mine about it, but too late, =(

Hey, just wanted to say how pleased I am as this couldn’t have come at a better time with my brother getting a ps3 soon and having the need to use the online storage feature. Thanks and I’ll be patiently awaiting my code.

@weasal-dave
Thanks for putting me right and I agree with your last comment, Plus is not value for money and I also was not interested in winning the prizes.
My comment still stands regardless of who judged, but I must say sorry to James for judging to quickly myself. Sorry James.

@weasel dave,… yeah that comment you pointed me toward was one of the better ones..
also i’d ‘hate’ participating in a readers choice topic every week, but am sure the odd one or two a year would, or at least Should prove to be very entertaining, i agree and also stated in a earlier post that it cannot be easy to choose a good topic every week, and james has my sympathies for that daunting task,.. i also liked the debate about the older games we had a while ago, though up to now the most interesting one (for me) was the augmentations/advances that ‘maybe’ started out in a video game (or film), but i really do hope that one week james ask’s us to include our ideas on what could be included in the fri…weekend! debate, thnx for your earlier feedback.

No problem, I have tried coming up with some debate questions myself and it’s not easy. The best I have come up with is:- Which non-gaming function of your PS3 do you use most and why? anyone else got any? this could get interesting!

Depends on what you’re looking for in a game.. For me it doesn’t necessarily need to be a big game to get value out of it.. Quality over quantity.. A high graphical and technical quality is what I’m looking for in games primarily.. That’s why the exclusives are my favorite games out there this gen.. AAA production values, good graphics, good controlls,.. Most multiplatformers don’t come close to the exclusives imo (that’s not to say there aren’t brilliant multiplats out there too) so the exclusives are always must haves for me.. I’d love to see Sony doing more multiplatform remakes like the first Bioshock, so they don’t feel like 360 ports and are tailored for the ps3 console in particular..

There are then games that stretch your skill, imagination and the limits of gaming. For example, Uncharted, Killzone, Final Fantasy XII, COD Modern Warfare and Infamous. All have great story-lines(admittedly not altogether original in some cases – just very well done!) all have believeable characters or the ability to suck you into the games world and have the ability to prevent you from wanting to put down the controller. These are games that stand out head and tails above all others of it’s genre and entice you to keep playing – even after completion. These games are solid, well tested prior to release and have graphics that will blow your mind. Additionally, if native/exclusive to only one console, you would want to purchase the console in order to experience the game.

It is these games that are worth the title “value for money”. Games that become less like a hobby and more of an experience. Less gimick and more gimme!!!

Thanks to James and the independent judge, I just received my voucher! Also, congratulations to all the other winners!

just got my code.
Thankyou!!!!

James, I have not received a code yet. Have you been able to send mine?

Everyone knows the effort that goes into producing games for PS3. The likes of the mighty Uncharted, GT5 and the immense Heavy Rain. Gaming IS cheap. The hours of enjoyment, that previously unachievable trophy that open up the platinum, the immersive story or competitive online multiplayer. Every last detail is just right, the controller is on, the TV flicks to HDMI1…let the games begin. Talk may be cheap but gaming is even cheaper. Start you engines, grab your guns, kick back and fall into the world of Playstation, in gaming terms there is no better place to be!!