http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... ?id=241512

You wouldn't be buying at those prices too often, would you?

Haven't EA just given away Command & Conquer: Red Alert for free on the PC within the last couple of months?

Probably, I've seen it ridiculously cheap for the consoles, in fact, around what they're asking for the iPad version seemingly

There's bound to be a fair amount of this initially. Nobody really knows what premium, if any, people will be willing to pay for iPad optimised apps. So they guess and being corporations they tend to guess on the high side. if they don't get the sales they'll have to drop the price soon enough.

Given the cost of games for the DS and PSP, those prices do not sound bad.

Remember, the iPad is a "premium product". Cheaparse people like me will just run freeware games on a netbook

If you look around the net though, many good/half-decent DS and PSP games are often that price or only slightly more, and you can sell them on or lend them to people

I think it depends. When the App Store opened there were lots of 59p apps. It sort of set the scene.
With Android, their app store opened with a few really good apps which were free, which again, set the scene.

If the iPad App Store opens with expensive apps, we could potentially see that last for a fair while...However, seeing as you can (currently) run iPhone apps on the iPad, the increased price might not last too long...

Ah, that's an important factor I'd overlooked. iPad games are more like a rental...

Well, you're probably talking 20 quid or more for decent PSP or DS game so it's a fair bit more in pocket money terms. And you can't sell on games on a PSP Go or DSi Ware games. In fact, you can't even transfer DSiWare games if you buy a new DS, which is bloody scandalous frankly.

Digital distribution does seem to be 'the future' as far as publishers are concerned. The second hand market makes them no money, therefore they'd be much happier if it went away... I don't think you can single out iPad games in this respect, although it remains to be seem exactly what sort of premium the market will sustain (as oppose to what the publishers would like to see).

All I can say is that Mirror's Edge game had better be decent, not just some Canabalt clone.

Given the cost of the games on the DS and PSP they look like definite bargains. More so for the iPad when you consider the bigger screen.

+1. Though I have seen some of the latest DS games for around £18, the Sonic Collection and even the movie licensed games etc. The PSP games do hold their price a little longer, but they're often the same (though I don't follow them as much).

I think that second hand games have one huge benefit that is ignored. Without the ability to recover some of the costs when games are sold, the original cost needs to be substantially less. A teenager buying a £50 game can probably get £25 for it second hand. This puts the effective cost as £25 to own the game. Without that option they will probably only want to spend £25 on that same game via download. The games publishers will probably have to sell a lot more games to meet their development costs.