Video Game Prices: Too High?

Despite my ranting about the new video game systems; I finally purchased an Xbox 360 the other week. Mainly to play Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for now and hopefully some good games in the future.

I bought the elite system (or whatever it's called), the wireless network card, a recharging station for the batteries, and the cooling station. In the end, I spent about $800. I also purchased Oblivion for about $60 extra.

I've read online about people complaining about the prices of video games, so while playing Oblivion (excellent game; if a little too easy once you got to be a higher level - maybe I'll post on that one day), I got to think about pricing of games.

For $60, I got about 50 or 60 hours of gameplay. I did it all - closed like 40 Oblivion gates, explored every fort (the quest to find the wine sucked), did every quest (except the thieves guild and the assassins guild) and pretty much found every thing that there was to find. If I only played it once, I paid about $1/hour for the entertainment. That's not a bad price, is it?

I realize there are shorter games; many games probably range about 12 hours, right? At $60, that is still $5/hour of entertainment (or suffering, if you made a bad choice). And that's to play as many times as you want, as many friends you want, as many family members as you want. Plus, you could possibly resell the game on Ebay or your local video game store and get part of that investment back. All in all, not too bad, is it?

Especially in comparison to other entertainment methods.

Movies, for example. Let's say your typical movie lasts $9 and lasts 90 minutes. Assuming you go alone, don't buy any drinks or food, you are paying $6/hour for a movie. And you are just a passive observer. If you bring a family member or friend, you are back up to $9/hour for the same entertainment. If you add a gut busting drink and popcorn, the cost keeps rising.

Let's say you go to Disney World. A one day ticket costs about $60 dollars. Assuming you go alone and don't get the thrill of standing in 2 hour lines at each ride (yeah right) then you can really do the park in about 3-4 hours. That's about $15/hour. If you add other people, food, etc to the mix you can really ramp up those costs really quickly. And again, besides sweating, kids vomiting all around you and being assaulted by people dressed in costumes you are pretty much a passive observer to what is happening around you.

Finally, let's compare a $60 video game to an Xbox Live Arcade Game. I'll take Double Dragon, which was just recently released. According to the review you pay $5 for this game for 20 minutes of entertainment. That, too, works out to $15/hour of game play - assuming you play it once for 20 minutes and quit. After all, how many Abobos can one man beat up?

My problem with video game pricing is that most top tier games are equally priced. I don't think a 10 hour game should be priced the same as a 50 hour game. I realize the company sets their price for each (probably within Microsoft guidelines or something) but I think there some be some gradation on the expected play time of a given title. The main thing I notice on review sites (gamespot, etal) is that the length of the title comes into play. I'd have a hard time spending $60 on a 10-hour game, but no problem spending it on one that lasted 40-50 hours.

Note: I omitted the original cost of the unit into each price calculation because the expected lifespan of the unit is say, 5 years. If you play a decent amount of games over that period of the time, the initial investment - depreciated over the life of the system - is pretty insignificant.