XBLA game prices have gone up, folks still buying

Microsoft has admitted that prices for Xbox Live Arcade games have climbed "over the last few years," and despite this, people are still purchasing the content.

According to XBLA portfolio director Chris Charla, speaking with GI.biz, the fact folks are still buying despite the price increase, prove consumers are willing to pay for quality products.

"If you look at Live Arcade, and do the math, and look at the publicly available sales numbers, you can see that average prices on XBLA have crept up over the last few years, which has been an interesting trend because on some app markets there's been a race to zero as fast as possible," he said.

"We've seen a little bit of the opposite happening. I don't really know where prices are going to go - ultimately, that's set by the market - but it has been really gratifying to see that people are willing to pay a premium price for digital content.

"Sometimes, when [developers] talk about Live Arcade they're like, 'We want to do a boxed quality game on Live Arcade', and I'm like, 'What does that mean?' I can point at a bunch of 38 and 42 and 56 metacritic scoring boxed games, so it actually kind of p**ses me off. I think the games that we're shipping - a Limbo or a Castle Crashers - are as good as anything on the market."

According to GI.biz, in 2009, 21 of the 86 offerings were prices at 1200 Microsoft Points. By 2010, 27 out of 85 games were offered at that price.

In 2011, 20 games have been confirmed to be priced at 1200 points, with a "number of significant releases due before the end of the year."