“It will be priced appropriately,” says Balough
An interview between Destructoid’s Jim Sterling and Sega’s Ken Balough reveals the first glimpse at potential price points for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I, and possibly future episodes in the installment.
“We haven’t officially announced a price yet but we definitely have a range in mind,” Balough said in the quick Q&A. “Somewhere between, obviously, ten and fifteen dollars.”
In contrast, the initial release of Capcom’s Mega Man 9 to downloadable consoles ran the virtual currency equivalent of $10. Later in-game DLC for the game, however, eventually pushed the final cost over the $20 mark.
Should the ballpark figure for this and future episodes, and depending on the number of future episodes, the final cost to fans for the whole Sonic 4 series may run about the same as a budget title or right under full price for a physical disc.
“It will be priced appropriately for what that content will be,” Balough explains. “Similar for the iPhone, it will be priced appropriately for what [the iPhone customer] would expect to pay.”
Most already know what will be in the game–four main zones, three acts each, a boss act each, special stages, plus the E.G.G. Station Zone. With this in mind, do you think a $15 or even $10 price is fair? Tell us in the comments section.
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Convert $10 to British Pound Sterling and that’s about £6.75, that’s about 1/8 of an average XBOX/PSP game. Still, three episodes would only amount to £20ish which isn’t much.
No. $10 is pushing it for a game that I’ll be able to blow through in a single sitting, even if they have put a lot of extra polish into it to get it to compare to the older titles. Let’s put it this way. I spent $15 on Shadow Complex and earned probably about 20 hours of playtime. Remember back when they suggested Sonic 4 Episode 1 was going to be $5? I still consider that the most valid price. If they screwed up the physics and had to double the dev time, that’s a loss they eat, they don’t get to double the price for that, even if that polish tones things, because the goal was to have that polish from the beginning.
Sonic 4 looks nice, but it consists of 4 Zones plus a final boss. It’s download only which means it’s DIRT cheap to maintain for sale. I’d pay $10 if I was getting 8 Zones or more out of it, but for 4 Zones and a boss stage that I’ll beat in a 2 hour playthrough, it’s simply not worth my money.
Cool.
@Viking ZX
the first Sonic 1 was a bit more than that and it was about 60 bucks so this is a perfect deal
That seems cheap for around a third of a fairly short game. Especially given the typical replay value of platformers.
Back in my day, it would cost you a little over $200 if you want to buy Sonic1, Sonic2, Sonic3, AND Sonic & Knuckles if you bought them all on launch date. Of course these are 16-bit legendary status games so they’re worth the price anyway.
Sure I’ll play $10-15 for it… providing they include a Classic Sonic ingame model and not have it as a DLC :3
10 dollars since this is only part of a whole game. This is only episode 1, it’s only got a mere 4 zones (containing 3 acts each and a boss act) plus a Final Boss round which consists of boss copypasta and then the final boss. Then we have the special stages which are just there to gives you chaos emeralds for completing them. The overall experience will be short, so 10 dollars definitely.
Now if this episode 1 had at least 7 zones and was a full game on its own, I’d say it’d be worth at LEAST 15, I’d pay 20 for just those 3 more zones since it’d bring it to a full game.
Look at the new Rocket Knight game. Definitely not a 15 dollar game. Good, yes, but that price is a bit steep considering the short gameplay value it offers. I don’t want Sonic 4 to make that same mistake and suffer for it. (I want this episodic series to prosper and be complete in the end) The Sega Allstars racing content was overpriced and it’s not too popular. If you look at Megaman 9 and 10 you get a full game for a very reasonable 10 bucks, but you can choose to pay extra for more features later. That’s a very cool idea. You pay for what you want, you don’t get the whole package shoved down your throat just to play a simple new megaman game.
And I agree that a classic-looking HD Sonic be in this game as an option. Doesn’t have to replace the neo Sonic design, but we oldschool fans want that.
$10 is an appropriate price. Assuming there are three episodes, at $10 each it’d make the entire Sonic 4 $30, which would be the expected budget price should it ever see a physical release. How much you wanna bet that one of the aspects of Sonic’s 20th anniversary will be a physical release of the whole Sonic 4 (which would probably coincide with the online release of Episode 3)?
Thinking back on my earlier comment, if the game is as polished as they make it out to be, it will be worth it.
I guess it’s moot either way, as I’ll likely buy it anyway.
$15? For, what, an hour and a half of content or less? Absolutely not. Even $10 is pushing things a little bit. I know Sonic is your number one money maker, Sega, but no.
$5 USD would be a great cost given the amount of content in the game. $10 USD is pushing it just a bit, but alright considering we’re only getting about 3 Episodes. $15 is just rediculous.
10 dollars is fine, i only have banked 1200 wii points already.
(I wanna buy balade for megaman 10 long time ago, but i dindnt )
50/#ofepisodes
Use that formula and you’ll find you’re answers. Seems like they’re doing the same thing TellTale games did with SBCG4AP.
I’m thinking it’ll be 15 if there are 3 episodes, and 10 if there are 5.
@ Viking ZX
Sonic and the Black Knight was almost 20 stages long and I beat it in 2 hours. The number of stages doesn’t necessarily mean that the game will be short. The stages could be extremely long at this point.
Well, if:
$10 = £6.75
and
$15 = £10.12
I’d gladly pay £7 – £8 for Episode 1. But £10? No thanks.
i`ll pay no more that £10 cause USA money is twice UK money so…. It colud be something like £5 – £8 pounds over here
i think it should be $10 and hopefully it would be worth buying.
That was also 19 years ago hurf. Times have changed, and games like this aren’t worth as much as they used to be. 15 is pushing it, but I agree with 10 dollars, assuming we get 3 episodes.