Must be because the cost of storage on the MS servers keeps going up... oh wait...

How long before Sony runs "Downloadable Game Hunter" ads?

I don't think that the "average" price of an XBLA game (probably the mean) gives you any indication of what games actually cost. Maybe the amount of 10-point shovelware on sale like icons and wallpapers hasn't grown as much as 200-point games. Maybe the launch of "premium" content costing thousands of points has shifted the average upwards.

This isn't beans we're talking about, here. You can't use "game" as a fungible, nondistinguishable commodity with an average price.

lets see, you have to pay for the 360, pay for LIVE, then the price of the games keeps going up... thanks microshaft

One thing not noted - the game content itself. A lot of the newer games are much more complex than the original XBLA offerings. When the service launched, a lot of the games were simply 80's and 90's arcade titles - Gauntlet, Pac-Man, Joust, etc., and were priced accordingly. Now, there's a lot more original and in depth content, which of course, costs more to develop, thus a higher price.

The points system is such bullshit.

I bought Fallout 3 on Steam before discovering the Pittsburgh add-on pack is only available on Microsoft's system.

Interesting that Microsoft is increasing prices while Steam appears to be decreasing prices.

Maybe we haven't noticed the price increase because we are spending so much time waiting for repaired and recertified consoles.

I'm currently waiting on a coffin so I can ship in my second console. Its amazing, I buy a new console and within 3 years I will have owned 3. 1, and likely 2, being previously owned and "repaired".

I'm spending more and more time on Playstation@Home. At least the arcade games on there are both entertaining and free!

They have such a scheme going, you pay 25 dollars for 2000 points. Then for games such as Halo 3 or Call of Duty you have to buy the new maps otherwise you can not play most of the content. These map packs usually go for about 800 points. There are two map packs for Call of Duty leaving you with 600 points that you can't buy anything with unless you want a Call of Duty Theme. So you end up paying 60 Dollars for the game + another 20 dollars for the points to actually play the game. Is it the same for PS3?

@ngoandy: Pitt really wasn't worth it, Operation Anchorage was though, Chinese Stealth Suit /drool

@Greg Hart: Yes and no. There are still map packs and the like, and they cost about the same, but they don't use Spacebucks. You basically have a small account with Sony, and as long as your purchase is over $5.00, you can pay for it directly. If it's under $5, they charge you that five and hold the rest as credit toward your next purchase.

@lodleader: You can buy XBLA games with a free silver account, too. Just sayin'.

1) The headline leads with "Stagflation" but no evidence for stagflation in given in the article, only inflation.

2) As previous posters have said, the increase in average game cost is likely due to the increasing number of premium $15-$20 titles, as publishers embrace digital delivery for non-arcade, non-throwaway games. Titles at this price point simply didn't exist in '05-'06.

800 points for a map pack still sucks, though.

@Sparkstalker: Right. Originally Arcade games had a 50 MB limit. As such, they were less complex. Now there's games like Castle Crashers, and Battlefield 1943 was just released as an Arcade download. The chart isn't showing stagflation, it's showing a shift in the depth and quality of the games.

@Greg Hart: I never understood why you have to buy points online in the wierd blocks like that. I'll point out that the cards they sell at retail are in the more useful denominations (1600 points).

These price increases aren't about "stagflation"

They are about companies wising up to the service and issuing more original (expensive) content, rather than just (cheap) crappy ports from the 80's.

the prices are rising because of the increased interest and budgets of Downloadable games. MS is launching a AAA game from the makers of Gears of war exclusively on XBLA. The game is a proper release not a indie game not a casual puzzle game but a balls out action game. Budget titles still come out and the indie games are still priced mostly at a measly 200 points($2.50) many of which are top notch games themselves.

@superberg: Then for games such as Halo 3 or Call of Duty you have to buy the new maps otherwise you can not play most of the content.

What? Either you mean you can't play the game unless you get the new packs, which is absolutly false. You can play and enjoy both multiplayer and singleplayer just fine. In fact the majority of players with always be playing on the free maps.

Or the alternative is you expect to play most of the content of the expansion for free which is crazy, though a lot of gamers seem to be rife with entitlement.

@lodleader: higher game costs can equal more significant budgets, with full disc released games being made available as downloadable games soon expect this "average game price" to sky rocket, it still doesn't mean jack to the quality of XBL.

@Greg Hart: in the next update real world currency purchases(in your native currency) will be available for most of the content. Smaller items like gamertags and such will still require point purchases.

@Tmoney02: I think his issue is that once new content packs are released, most people online will be using them. I don't play Halo(much) or Call of Duty(ever), so I can't comment on percentages, but I do recall that Halo 2 players gravitated toward new maps.

Of course, if you want to play with your friends, you'll all have to have access to the same content. This means either your content-owning friends abstain, or you lay out the Spacebucks.

@Sparkstalker: Exactly, microsoft used to require all games to be 50 mb or less. Then it was 120 mb, 240 mb, and now I belive it is pretty easy to get permission to do games larger than 240 MB.

The result being far more original and indepth titles, which of course need an increased price. This is like complaining about your cable bill increasing becuase you bought HBO and showtime.

@Coles_Law: You buy in blocks to reduce credit card processing fees. They make them odd blocks so that you carry a running balance and end up buying more than you need.

@tailstoo: Sony could run all the ads they want, but if someone already has an xbox, it won't do anything.

And for new customers, I don't think people buy a console based on the price of the downloadable games.

@HeyApples: While I agree that there are a lot of great indie games that are worth the cash, there are still plenty of crappy ports!

@DMXParsons: Nailed it with number 2. I am scratching my head at why a game site would write this article when they should and do know better.

Now if they went a step further and showed they controlled for ever increasing amount of in-depth games and somehow made it a more apples to apples comparison I would be interested, but Xbox live arcard of Ocotober of 2005 is not the same place with the same type of games 4 years later. It has evolved, and so has the price of some of the games - for better or for worse.

@superberg: Firstly, MS knows gamers are willing to pay for the content. It's amazing how fast the local gamestop sells out of points cards when the latest Call of Duty maps are released or a big new game is released for download.

If they want it, gamers are willing to spend money on it. There's a good reason those $150 Collector's editions sell out yearly? Because gamers are willing to pony up the bucks for quality product.

MS knows this. It's simple logic. "Hey if we can get 2000 downloads at $5 and the same 2000 downloads at $8, what the hell are we charging only $5 for?"

Phil, I'm not sure this is stagflation but maybe you are using the term tongue in cheek. It's true that the price is rising during a recession but like the rise of text messaging prices, I think it's more a case of a captive marketplace, i.e. they raise the price because they can. Also sometimes in a recession consumers increase spending on certain "feel good" products in response to the economy, such as entertainment.

@ngoandy: I did the same, not really thinking about how DLC would be distributed. A slight annoyance, but there is still a workaround to get the DLC to work on steam.

@JustinAche: I disagree with Pitt not being worth it. Anything that expands my collection of weapons is definately worth it :)

@Sparkstalker: Just to elaborate on this point, games have been getting larger and more complex since XBLA's inception. Now I think they actually have a limit of about 450 mb at most, which is pretty huge for a downloadable game. And a lot of these games are online; I would imagine Battlefield 1943 takes up a pretty good chunk of server power with all the people playing online.

So, in effect, more pressure on the XBL servers for downloads and gaming causes a rise in price. Makes sense.

@lodleader: And then you also have to pay for a TV, and have to pay for a house to put it all in, and you'll have to pay for a chair to sit in, and pay for food to stay alive to play the games... God, what a bunch of assholes.

@OminousG: Keep waiting. I'm pretty sure they stopped sending coffins a while ago. Provide your own box.

@hungryhomer: And just tack on an additional note, there's development costs for these new titles on XBLA. Games are bigger, more beautiful, and spend more time in development. The price increase is justified.

There was a lot of these sort of comments on Kotaku. You would expect people to go "OMG MS IS STEALING OUR MONIES" but there was an odd universal agreement that, hey, XBLA offerings are better and priced accordingly.

I'm just pissed they swaped the TMNT release for some game no one gives a damn about.

I want my turtles re-shelled now! Not on August 5th!

@Corporate_guy: I don't know. I might be influenced to save $10 or $15 on my DLC and games by spending $400 on a PS3. Makes sense to me!

@Greg Hart: Or you can wait for the map packs to drop in points - it takes a while, but you can be cheap about it.

XBox has sales on downloadable content every month and older map packs are usually part of the sale. And when new maps come out, the old maps drop - so when Halo3s mythic map came out this year, the legendary maps dropped 200 points - and there are a ton of free maps to DL on that game as well.

And a lot of individuals don't bother with getting the map packs right away - plus, you tend to search for people with and without the new maps anyway. There's plenty of play with and without - it's not like an MMO where not getting the expansion pack means you might as well not be playing the game.

@logicalnoise: horseshit, I've been buying full PS3 games and they don't use "points" they use real money and their online service is free and the game prices have BEEN DROPING...

And don't give me that LIVE is better WARBLGARBL because they only things missing from PSN I don't want. If I wanted to get invites to play games I am not currently playing I'd be PLAYING THOSE GAMES... If I wanted to chat with someone while playing a different game than them I'd call them after the game since I like to concentrate on my games and on my conversations.

I never have connection problems in online play and Resistance 2 allows for 60 players per session vs what 16 for Halo?

Yeah I'll take free online, lower DL game prices, and a less restrictive DL policy (5 downloads to 5 different machines per purchase)

@superberg: good point, and I would not expect them to allow you to buy 50 points at a time. I'm just surprised there is a disparity between the cards you buy (all evenly divisible by 800) and the online CC options.

@Applekid: You can buy some games and content, but they are time-delayed. Gold members get a lot of stuff early. Or at least they used to.

PSN is actually a very good service. I don't care about most of the social stuff -- which basically boils down to chat -- so PSN is just fine. I get Street Fighter IV invites from time to time, but other than that I just play random people and I'm happy.

Gold made sense in the early days, but now that most games use P2P networking and the 360 is loaded with ads, it seems kind of like a poor way to treat your customers.

@dragonfire81: Because the cheaper something is, the more of an impulse buy it becomes? Because people might not buy something because they don't feel like spending $10.00 to get the last 200 points they need? I've put off any number of purchases because I don't feel like buying more points.

Also, you might want to look into those "collector's editions" selling out early. Halo 3 "Cat Helmet" editions were still on Best Buy shelves months after release. Sure, Atlus games always sell out, but they make 200,000 copies and that's that.

@Coles_Law: I just wish they would stick to simpler costs. (100 points instead of 120 or whatever). I have to do double-math to figure out how much I am spending on things, and it's very annoying.

@Stephmo: still waiting for cod4 map pack to drop. Its still at the original 800 pnts, even though COD5 is out and COD6 is coming in the fall...

Uh... that's because the selection of games available now is different from what was available initially. You can pretty easily predict how much an XBLA game will cost, and that hasn't changed since the system came out. The classic games with minor modifications and simple games have always been 400 pts ($5). Better quality, original games have always been 800 pts ($10). MS has also increased the maximum file size for arcade games. I believe the max was 50 MB initially, but now you have Battlefield 1943 that's probably over 1 GB. It costs 1200 pts ($15), and it's well worth it.

"The digital format makes for a non-fluctuating supply, but it looks like demand keeps pushing the prices up."

I'm not sure the price laws of supply and demand apply where supply is theoretically infinite.

I suppose that if the demand were so great that the bandwidth to download them became a premium, then I could understand an increase in price.

We're a Sony family anyway, so it really doesn't bother me. PSN has its flaws, but at least I don't have to pay for it.

@KingPsyz here for HappyFunKingPsyz©: well aren't you special.

truth is live is better PSN has far less of a cummity feel, tracking friends is still a pain, keeping everyone together over multiple games is neigh impossible. You may not want chat but it's pretty much required for any decent team play especially high player count games like resistance. but Sony's lack of voice support just ends up hurting their own games and the communities that support it.

Many people forget that MS upkeeps all online games. so even today some people are still playing perfect dark zero online(who knows why but you can).

As for your "my player count is higher than yours", who cares? I played 1 vs 100 with over 70,000 players the other night. Doesn't matter it's the games and value and both companies want to increase their value. the higher cost games coming out are worth it. There's still plenty of budget titles coming out.

@JustinSane07: splosion man actually looks pretty fun, and the maw was very entertaining despite being a kids game.

Once I made the mistake of buying Microsoft points with my credit card through Xbox Live. Granted it was only 500 points but it was the principle. Since I live in Canada, 500 points is $7.25 rather than $6.25. Problem was, I got hit with an exchange rate on my CC which made the total $8.37, which is a 33% higher price! I thought the higher price for Canada factored in the exchange rate (if not, then Microsoft is ripping off Canadians), in which case I paid exchange TWICE! From now on I will only buy points cards through the store ($20 for 1400 points).

And, minor point of accuracy, you can't download N64 programs on the Xbox. That's only on the Wii.

@JustinSane07:

The now online warranty service allows you to print a label, request a label, or request a box.

I already have a coffin on the way via UPS.

@kingzilch: Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie were N64 games and are now available on XBLA. Perfect Dark will be coming soon. Seems to be a Rare, thing, though.

Not every game is like this. Please keep in mind development costs. Wolfenstein 3D was released recently at 400 points. It's an old PC game, so yeah, doesn't cost much. Most of the 400 point games are pretty old arcade titles. A lot of the new XBLA games have had updated graphics and new features, try to keep that in mind.