While on the E3 show floor, I had a nice little chat with Sonic the Hedgehog 4 brand manager Ken Baloughs. While discussing the game and its development history, I took an opportunity on behalf of money-conscious fans everywhere to try and nail down a price point for the game. While Baloughs couldn't declare an official price, he gave me a ballpark figure -- between ten and fifteen bucks.
"We haven't officially announced a price yet but we definitely have a range in mind," he explained. "Somewhere between, obviously, ten and fifteen dollars. Something around that area."
For some, this price may seem expensive for an episodic game. Until we see the full game, nobody can say for sure, but Baloughs did assure me that the price would be worth it.
"It will be priced appropriately for what that content will be," he stated. "Similar for the iPhone, it will be priced appropriately for what [the iPhone customer] would expect to pay."
What do you reckon? A fair price for an awesome wave of nostalgia, or a princely sum for old-school fan service? Let your voice be heard, and keep reading Destructoid for more stuff from our great chat with Baloughs.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
1:40 AM on 06.16.2010 | 
A complete, resellable, physical copy of a Sonic game is easily worth at least $20 more than the download version. And the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts when it comes to this type of thing, with the episodic nature decreasing each parts value beneath true value until the project is completed, so I would have to deduct some more.
Maybe $8 for an episode, $10 an episode when all 4 are out, $40 for a completed version without resale value, and $60 for a physical copy.
The sad thing is, Sega would probably make more money off the people who don't have an online connection by selling a completed version at retail than they would by gouging their fans like this.
Well, I'm getting it anyway,
"$15 isn't expensive at all. If you get 4 episodes all priced at $15, that's a $60 game with more value than almost every other $60 on the market"
...that you can't resell, making its real cost significantly higher than a physical product.
I'll never pay more than $20 for a digitally distributed game. The entire game, not 25% of it.
(writes $5-$8 on a piece of paper, folds it and pushes it forward.)
Final offer, sir.
You can't resell downloads, which makes it's cost higher, and unlike physical media, downloads almost never get discounted.
At $15 an episode, we should just ignore this until it comes in a disk format.
If you download all the episodes of an episodic game, do they sort of join together into a single game, or does the system treat them as separate ones? I've always sort of wondered how that would work.
Please see my previous comments.
Episodic Games work just like a TV series. Things cross over, but every episode is a separate entity. PC games like Sam & Max Season 1-3 or Wallace and Gromit don't just keep going; the first episode ends and then you boot up the second.
Also, yes, the price sounds incredibly fair. The game is going to be rad!
1200msp for an episode... it'll have to be demoed first. You can pick up Sonics 1, 2 and 3 for that total, so 1 episode of 4 is a bit tight... even though it is brand new.
1200msp for an episode... it'll have to be demoed first. You can pick up Sonics 1, 2 and 3 for that total, so 1 episode of 4 is a bit tight... even though it is brand new.
Do that per episode and you're laughing.