As a failing economy continues to spiral downwards in the United States and the world over one company has decided to ask the truly important question, are video games to expensive? Now before you go scrambling to your nearest favorite board to start your annoying pole of the week, which we already know is going to contain some random radial button selection at the bottom to the likes of CHUCK NORRIS WINS, hear me out. Valve, the clever creators of Steam have recently created a consensus pole of their own sorts. As the holiday closed in they had decided to lower the cost of their popular FPS Left 4 Dead by half, the result? The game sales jumped 3000% in two days, in just two days the sale was able to eclipse the entire first weeks worth of sales.
It seems so simple doesn’t it? When was the last time you went to the video game store and stared at a new release for sixty dollars and mulled over the fact that you had just spent sixty dollars for a sub par video game the week or two before? Lets face it, in an age where most video game companies seem to construct their story line and game mechanics from a panel at your local 4th grade elementary school recess, fewer and fewer of us are willing to take that chance that your buying another sixty dollar dust collector. Let us hope this study will rub off on the music industry which struggles to figure out why we won’t spend upwards of twenty dollars for a CD with ten songs on it containing three that you’ll listen to repeatedly and seven that fall somewhere between elevator music torcher and recorded farts on a snare drum.
