14 DAY TRIAL // Brian Farrell, who is the Chief Executive Officer at publisher THQ, has stated that in order for video games to attract bigger numbers of customers the price of titles needs to come down from the current set point of 59.99 dollars for home console titles and, normally, 49.99 dollars on the PC.
The outspoken executive was talking at the BMO Capital Markets which takes place in New York and he said, “What we’re thinking about the business is we’re turning it on its head a little bit. It’s not, ‘how high a price can we get’, but ‘how many users’. If you can capture everyone under that economic curve, that’s where you can make the most money.”
Farrell says that his company will try to expand the market by putting out the upcoming MX vs. ATV Alive for just 39.99 dollars despite the fact that the game is set to have AAA quality levels, with the idea being to sell it to a lot of gamers who are attracted by the price and then allow those who want to buy downloadable content if they are interested in expanding their gaming experience.
The CEO added, “We think this is the future of gaming. We think that’s the way games are gonna go in the long term.”
He also says that digital sales created double the revenue for THQ during the current fiscal year and they are expected to again double in 2011, meaning that it might soon become more important to deliver high quality digital content than put out some secondary titles.
If the industry is truly interested in attracting more new players in the near future the companies might also think about segmenting their offerings in order to allow gamers to choose that content they are interested in and pay less than 59.99 dollars for it.