Xbox 360 titles in Australian stores now

360 News | To think we could have had the console instead.

A few publishers have mentioned today that their Xbox 360 titles have shipped to Australian stores and are available for purchase now. Activision has released both Call of Duty 2 and Quake IV to retail stores, each of these titles retail for $109.95 (they're around half that price on the PC, but let's keep that quiet).

Those with a decent memory will remember that the 2nd of March is the date that the Xbox 360 was originally set to release, before a delay set the console back until the 23rd of March. Microsoft's first party titles (Kameo, Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero) will also be in stores within twenty four hours.

Most of EA's titles have shipped as well, and they retail for a premium price of $119.95. Cough, splutter. The rest of the Xbox 360 hardware accessories will be available in the next week.

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28 Comments

plufim

5 years ago

"The rest of the Xbox 360 hardware accessories will be available in the next week."

Does that include the HD?

madmaltese

5 years ago

plufim wrote

"The rest of the Xbox 360 hardware accessories will be available in the next week."

Does that include the HD?

yep, ALL accesories will be in store on March 9

ObsoletE

5 years ago

meh, i had Quake 4 and COD2 several months ago.

Jim Dash

5 years ago

$120? My God....

Looks like buying games will become a rarer and rarer occurence every time..

plufim

5 years ago

Went into EB Rundle Mall today, no games for sale yet.

jojota

5 years ago

just look at true gamer all the $120 games are a $100 (most of them) and the $100 ones are 89.95 its great

theory

5 years ago

ObsoletE wrote

meh, i had Quake 4 and COD2 several months ago.

ummm... no, not on 360 you didn't

ObsoletE

5 years ago

^ and since they're the same game, i'm not likely to either...

theory

5 years ago

exactly... but this post is still about 360 games, so is there any point to saying you had the PC versions months ago?

Jeremy

5 years ago

umm... yay?

ZNMS

5 years ago

Better check out True Gamer then, thanks jojota.

ObsoletE

5 years ago

theory wrote

exactly... but this post is still about 360 games, so is there any point to saying you had the PC versions months ago?

was just a dig at the over-abundance of outright ports the x360 is launching with.

if it had been Gun, or King Kong that was mentioned in the article, i'd have still said the same thing.

macca

5 years ago

$119.95 is outrageous for ANY type of game, whether it be 360, PS2, PS3, whatever. I can only imaging retail sales will slow a bit at this price point (i'm talking about actual sales, not how many games are 'shipped' to stores).

When you think about it, it's basically a 33% price hike compared to the average new release PS2 title which usually sells at KMart for about $90. But are you getting 30% more value or a 30% greater experience etc...? I think not. You are still getting what is basically a sinlge player game. If you want multiplayer, you pay for the service (al la XBox Live).

I personally will never spend more than $89.95 on a game. And frankly, if sales are slow, they WILL lower the price point of new release titles - it's all about what the market will bear. If you guys all rush out and buy the thing as soon as it's touched the shelf, you can rest assured all future new releases will come with a $120 price tag attached.

k1dcharm

5 years ago

$120 per game is seriously too much, especialyl none of the XBox 360 titles are ground breaking. I reckon all gamers in Australia should boycott it, so that the price will come down (like what happened to the original XBox release - the price dropped from $699 to $399 in 2 weeks or so)

plufim

5 years ago

k1dcharm wrote

The driving force for that price drop was the release of the gamecube more then anything.

Suetekh

5 years ago

120 bucks! tell em their dreaming!

The only way I would pay over $90 for a new game is if it offers something extra (like special case bonus material etc). And the only time I pay $90 is if I know that the game is going to provide 20+ hours of entertainment (PGR2, GTA San Andreas etc).

Think about it, any game that has less than 20 hours decent play time will cost you at least $6 an hour to play!

You can go the video store and rent games for that much a night.

Anyway I would think that this price point will slow sales (therfore driving the price down eventually) and increase the second hand market (therefore reduceing Microsoft and publisher profits while playing into the hands of places like EB that will make a killing of second hand games).

b4GM4N

5 years ago

Do any of you realise that games 10 years ago cost $100? And that was when games where developed by a handful of people, not the hundreds that are involved today, when you had crappy 8 bit sound, not the orchestral soundtracks of today, no FMV, etc. Games are getting more and more expensive to make.

So for SOME games to $120 cost isn't a huge jump when you look at the cost of games over the past 10 years. How many other things have only gone up 20% over 10 years? Not many, let me tell you.

Get a grip and stop your whining. Do you want any games to play in a few years time? Games developers and publishers need to make money, or there won't be any games to play for $6 an hour.

k1dcharm

5 years ago

10 years ago, games were 32-bit, and there wasn't that much gamers out there.

Now we have millions or maybe even billions more gamers, so it is only natural for the price of the games to drop (rather than increase).

b4GM4N

5 years ago

Yes, there are lot more gamers out there and that is the reason the cost of games has been static. Which goes to show you how cheap games are now compared to back then. However the cost of MAKING games has skyrocketed and will continue to skyrocket, so this magic price point of $100 will not last forever.

Companies only drop prices when their costs drop, or through competition, not when their customer base continues to grow, when you have a particular price point. Why the hell would you cut your prices then?

It costs a whole lot more than $6 an hour to make a game.

macca

5 years ago

b4GM4n, 10 years ago, PC and console gaming was relatively still in its infancy. You didn't have a couple hundred thousand software engineers and programmers graduating every year, and only a fraction of the developed worlds population owned PC's. You also had many small and medium sized game houses, not just a few massive game houses that monopolised the market as they have now.

A lot has changed in 10 years. The arguement that development costs have risen is valid, however you must bear in mind that a company only choses to spend more money developing a title because IT HAS MORE MONEY to spend. How does it get all that money? By charging the maximum price the market will bear on a particular title and then market that title effectively to generate high sales. It's basic retail business management.

There was no need for Microsoft to bump there new releases by 25% as they've done with the 360 - this is pure marketing strategy at work - pitching 360 games at a wealthier market segment creates the impression that the console that plays those games is also vastly superior (i.e. it's all 'high end' stuff) and work all that extra money. It's a form of positive product reinforcement, albeit through effective pricing strategies.

Don't get me wrong, the 360 is superior to the old Xbox, but developing for it will not cost much more (especially when factoring in the excellent SDK Microsoft built for it)

Do not forget that the 360 is nothing more than a modified gaming PC. Developing software for it is very similar to developing for a multi-cored PC (e.g. using the new AMD and Intel chips) You will see many titles in the future released on both PC and Xbox 360, and they will be very similar at a code level.

I have a very good 'grip' on how this business model works. I work in the software industry myself. I think you need to realise that like it or not, you are clearly the no-questions-asked paying consumer that marketing guys in my industry love so much - you didn't even question the price hike!

profiler

5 years ago

i got quake 4 for $80 with vip card and kameo for $88.85 from eb

NismoR34

5 years ago

Just wanted to point out a few things in this argument.

Firstly, it isn't Microsoft who are charging $120 for their games, it is the third party developers such as EA and Activision.

Secondly, we were getting ripped off as gamers here in Australia 10 years ago with having to pay $100 for a game. These days with the extra development costs and whatever the price we are paying is about right although we are still getting slightly screwed around when compared to the American market. That's not gaming's fault though as unfortunately our dollar is too inconsistant for our RRP of $100 per game to start decreasing.

Lastly, most big games (of this generation) have been releasing at around the $84 mark before going up to their $99.95 price.

themak

5 years ago

Secondly the n00bs are having a flame war, I cordially invite them to PALGN. I'm taking the position that xbox 360 games need their high price point to stop Microsoft from haemmoraging money from the xbox 360 quite as badly as they did for the xbox. Especially as Microsoft now has a greater loss per unit sold than before, expensive xbox games will be a necessary consequence- you're still paying for the console.

Matt

5 years ago

Quote

The driving force for that price drop was the release of the gamecube more then anything.

It was one of many factors. The main factor driving the Xbox price drop was the fact that the sales of the console were absolutely miserable - when it dropped to $399 they sold twice as many as they had in the previous month, including launch.

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