Its revenue generation, robbery by another name. Console companies know full well that whatever the mass market says, it will buy on price for something that is put forward as part of the "grass is greener over the hill" syndrome. In the same way that electronic goods are "cheap" in a relative sense and attract near useless warranties as add ons (but in fact the warranties are the main revenue source by design, not the marketed product).

Industrial Gas companies will extol the virtues of their superior "oxygen/hydrogen mix" "amazing aromas for public places", whatever, they'll stuff anything they can into cylinders to attract customers - because their mainstream business is not selling gas (they lose a fortune on that), their mainstream business is renting cylinders .... and in reality should be named the XYZ Cylinder Rental company", not the "XYZ Industrial Gases Company"

So console games have their price "enhanced" as its a captive market, as part of the whole Strategic Marketing concept for Consoles. A market that is unlikely to moan too much as originally they made much to their mates of being in the "brave new world" of consoles, "leading edge", a "trailblazer", and "cheap hardware". Later they discover the game price ..... but you will not hear much about that ....

In terms of marketing and positioning its the same principle as prices of printers and prices of the cartridges to go with them - cheap printer, expensive cartridges. Marketers know full well the owners will not yell about price of ink/games etc as they were previously yelling about the great deal they had (the one the marketer let them have).

The most famous Strategic Marketing concept of the 20th Century, and still survives today, is the infamous "buy one get one free" offer - that one still ropes people in by the multi-million

Never ever underestimate the power and reach of Strategic Marketing campaigns, most of us are in the middle of one without even knowing it. From the Marketers stance, its like watching lambs to the slaughter

Regards
Zy

Is that really the correct address?

I checked terraspore.com and it was just a forum site, with no immediately apparent connection to Maxis or EA.

The prices simply dont adapt to the euro to dollar exchange rate. the price for console games was at 60 euro (or equivalent) back in the 90's and didnt changed since then. same with the price for pc games. (roughly 40-50€ depending on the game) at least in germany.
Thats why i buy most of my games at online stores since i discovered that method.

"Would you like the guy who sold you the car to be allowed to decide where you can drive your car, for how long, what you do with it, how you can drive it and who can be a passenger in it?"

"The thing I can not understand about the con$oles is that .. why the hell can't I install them to the hard drive, like I could with a modified XBOX."

You're guilty until proven innocent in the minds of the big name developers.

Frankly, these companies create their own piracy problems by charging too much for their games.

Should try living in Australia, when our dollar started skyrocketing everyone in the gaming community was going sweet what with the prices in America being roughly sixty dollars for a new retail game or fifty for a digital distribution it was going to work out to be a very good deal if buying off steam or other sites but no... they realised it and simply had the customers from Australia pay in Australian dollars on an Australian server where the prices were still 80 to 90 each.

When the effects in question may be having only a very marginal impact, there is little point in considering them all, because there is a cost involved in such considerations. Information about smaller effects will be much scarcer and therefore not only less reliable but also more costly to obtain, while also being of less value, meaning the costs likely outweigh the benefits. Furthermore the overall demand curve for the good will already have piracy factored in, since it will be the amount of the game demanded at the relevant price (and if the company is working off the amount sold at various prices, either on real data or on market research, this would be what would be used, e.g. asking people 'would you buy this game for x price? what about y' or more accurately, what price they would stop buying it, instead of 'if you couldn't pirate this game would you buy it for x price or y'?). Thus there is no need to consider piracy further/twice as you seem to be suggesting, and a good business person should generally be looking to maximise profits.

i think i will, but i just want spore so bad. I even uninstalled the trial SCC because of the DRM it has

Check out the CnC3 forums to get a feel for what EA does to games with a hardcore following.

Game released in Beta, bug ridden.
Slow & poor patching.
Poor balancing.
Ignored cannon from earlier installments.
No forum search.
Few players on online due to bugs, desyncs and disconnectors.
Developing the expansion killed the main game.
Then the expansion has been killed from the start as the dev team allocate resources to RA3 instead of supporting the product.

A potentially great game let down. It could and should have been so good.

STARDOCK FTW!!!  
Down with EA and stupid DRM's   
Support PC gaming!!