The Video Game Critic

I just read Matt Casamassina's new blog entry over at IGN, and he's complaining about Virtual Console prices.

I can't figure out what he's talking about. Mario Kart 64 tends to average around $20-30 bucks on eBay, while it costs $10 in the VC.

Nintendo games tend to go for between a dollar (Urban Champions) up to $15-20 bucks for more desirable titles like gold cart Zelda. So a flat price of $5 seems perfectly fair, since you are saving money on the hits and allowing for some profit margin on the less interesting titles (I personally like Urban Champions, but only for historical value).

It's like Matt is forgetting that the service is free, and with that there should be an expectation of increased cost elsewhere.

But then again, I don't use services like Gametap, so I'm not sure if he is basing his opinion on them; are they cheaper?

What do you guys think?

-Rob

The thing is, it has stiff competition.  It's biggest competition comes from classics collection, and not xbox live arcade.  Lets look at some of the recent ones.

Sega Genesis Collection - Had 28 games.  20 dollars retail, but I found it for 10 dollars on sale.  On the virtual Library I believe Genesis Games cost 6 dollars.  28 * 6 = 168$.  I'll take the Genesis collection for 10 dollars instead. 

Capcom arcade collection - A ton of great games all arcade perfect.  The Virtual Library always uses console versions of games, so this collection is better (except maybe in the case of bio commando)  I bought it for 10 dollars

Midway arcade classics -Smash TV Robotron Paperboy Marble Madness and a ton of other games all on 1 disc?  I picked it up for 8 dollars, the same price as one SNES on the virtual library

Also on top of having to compete with those games, it also has to compete with emulation.  Why spend hundreds of dollars filling up your collection on the virtual library, when you can download them on your computer for free?  Sure, it's not exactly legal, but who cares about morals when hundreds of dollars are at stake?

About the only use I could see out of it, is maybe getting some rare N64 games like battle ogre 64 or Kirby 64.  Emulation is horrible for N64s, and those cartridges are expensive on Ebay.  Also maybe they could bring over Dracula X, but rumor is, Capcom is making it for the PSP right now.

 Also maybe they could bring over Dracula X, but rumor is, Capcom is making it for the PSP right now.

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Whoops don't know why I said Capcom, that should say Konami.

"Mario Kart 64 tends to average around $20-30 bucks on eBay, while it costs $10 in the VC."

I live in the UK and you can get Mario Kart 64 for less than $10 over here and we usually pay way more than you guys.  MK 64 must be super rare in the US if they go for that much on eBay, that's a ripoff.

The thing with ebay is that even if you pay $1 for a game, you're probably still paying about $5.00 with shipping. It's very rare that you could ever get any game for less than $5 after shipping on Ebay. Also, Mario Kart 64 is indeed around $20 here in the US. You lucked out on that one bluemonkey.