Pricing for Legally Licensed ROMs

[Token]

The Polycade thread got me thinking about pricing for licensed ROMs. I know in the past a few companies tried to legally license ROMs for sale and were unsuccessful, but I'm curious what the community thinks.


1. If legally licensed ROMs/CHDs were easily available, would you buy them?

2. What price would you be willing to pay per game?

3. For fun- What would be your first purchase?

[pbj]

No

$0.00

Zarzon

[CheffoJeffo]

1. If legally licensed ROMs/CHDs were easily available, would you buy them?

Yes and I have in the past. That said, I expect that I would be part of a very small group who would. When I have in the past, it was typically about supporting a company trying to do the right thing as opposed to actually liking the specific games (exception made for the 440 COLLEX'N Multigame, where the games are both licensed and awesome!).

2. What price would you be willing to pay per game?

Tough one. For most games I wouldn't be willing to pay more than a buck and that includes popular classics (e.g. the stuff I am willing to accept the damage to my soul to play on a 60-in-1). For certain games -- where I have a strong connection -- that number would go up and could be comparatively high. I spent a lot of time playing Rygar and would easily (if I did not already own a working boardset with controls that matched the machine I played on) pay $25+ for a licensed version.

3. For fun- What would be your first purchase?

If I ever decide to do a dedicated MAME gun game (lots of ducks to line up before that would happen), prolly Area51 or some decent gun game of that generation.

[Slippyblade]

@Token - There have been attempts at a legit ROM sales service.  Look up StarROM as an example.  There are many issues that prevent such a service from working.  The refusal of existing rights owners to cooperate, the pre-existence of complete ROMsets, not to mention that some copyrights are so tangled in legal ---That which is odiferous and causeth plants to grow--- that nobody actually knows who the current rights holder is.

To answer your questions though.

1) Depends.  If I was paying I'd expect support from the rights holders.  At the very least, authorized and official ROMdumps.
2) Couple of bucks at most.  These are ROMs we are discussing.  Not PCBs.
3) Either Street Fighter 2 or D&D: Tower of Shadows

[CheffoJeffo]

If I was paying I'd expect support from the rights holders.  At the very least, authorized and official ROMdumps.

This is a great point ... who the ---fudgesicle--- wants to step into the morass of emulation and ROMs and have to sort through and support specific dumps (for a buck or two here or there)?

[Generic Eric]

The next best thing is to wait for a game to be ported to PC.  They aren't always great.  That said, www.humblebundle.com is having a 25 year anniversary neo-geo bundle RIGHT now. Get some!

[keilmillerjr]

The next best thing is to wait for a game to be ported to PC.  They aren't always great.  That said, www.humblebundle.com is having a 25 year anniversary neo-geo bundle RIGHT now. Get some!

Very cool! Although there is a lot of discussion about snk illegally distributing an emulator that they do not own with roms. If that be true...

[Jamesbeat]

Nope
Zero
Ghosts n goblins (assuming for a moment that I couldn't get it in a romset).

I always chuckle when people get high and mighty about this (not necessarily on this forum, but in general).
I doubt there is one retro gamer on the planet who doesn't own illegal roms.

Except me of course.

[monkeybomb]

I have a license for a few games from star roms. I would buy licenses again if it were in the area of $1 - $5, depending on the game.  I actually think it would make people like their systems more.  It would mean having a collection of games that you really like vs trying to sort through an endless ocean of games you never want to play anyway.

Having said that, I'm not re-buying roms I already paid for. I have a handful of licensed games from the disks that came with an x-arcade and a Hotrod SE.  I don't think I can legally play those same roms on my cabinet, even if the disk is sitting on the arcade cabinet.  That's the kind of thing that makes people want to forget the game designers exist.

[surface tension]

In this day and age of app stores, this model seems perfectly logical and acceptable. But as has been pointed out, it's getting the many licencors to get on board. When StarRoms was in existence, I spent quite some time chatting with the owner (when he wasn't pulling his hair out) over the hurdles he'd had to jump to get as far as he did... which was only a bunch the older Atari ROMS the last time I checked before it shut down. He said that unless he was talking 6 figures, many of the companies wouldn't even talk to him.

As a vendor, we would love to supply our systems this way and depending on the game, I think between £1 and £10 would be fair.

[big10p]

There's no point discussing this, IMO - it'll never happen. It's the very definition of a logistical nightmare.

[saint]

1. Yes. I bought 100% of the ROMs that StarRoms sold. LIke Cheffo though, I was mostly wanting to support the concept.

2. $2 or so per game, as much as $5 for megahits such as ...

3. Gauntlet Legends.

The Polycade thread got me thinking about pricing for licensed ROMs. I know in the past a few companies tried to legally license ROMs for sale and were unsuccessful, but I'm curious what the community thinks.


1. If legally licensed ROMs/CHDs were easily available, would you buy them?

2. What price would you be willing to pay per game?

3. For fun- What would be your first purchase?

[Token]

Thank you for all your answers.

Like others have mentioned, I'm doubtful a licensed ROM store can be successful in the long-run, at least in the current environment. The number of potential customers is too small. However, if something like the Polycade were to hit the market at closer to a $500 price point, I can see a lot of people interested in legal ROMs.

Imagine-- A pre-made affordable cabinet with a built in ROMstore where you can easily buy games for $.99-$4.99. I would never buy one, but I have a ton of friends who will never make their own cabinet who would go for this sort of thing. And then we would all have access to legal ROMs.

And I suppose I should answer my own questions...

1. Yes

2. $.99-$4.99 depending on the game

3. Paperboy (yes, even though the controls on a joystick aren't that great)

[BadMouth]

$4.99 for just a rom and not even an interface to play it?
It's not like there are development costs and the only overhead would be for collecting the money.
Buck a game max for the blockbuster hits.  Maybe a quarter a pop for the rest.
"You used to pay a quarter to play it once.  Now with a quarter you can play it forever....." 

FYI
Humble Bundle's current deal is "pay what you want" for some DRM free Neo Geo games.
(or pay more and get more, or pay at another tier and get more...whatever)
If you pay $40 you get a T-shirt. 
Not sure I can bring myself to pay for games that I can already play for free (and don't really play much).
I kinda want that shirt though.

[Generic Eric]

$4.99 for just a rom and not even an interface to play it?
It's not like there are development costs and the only overhead would be for collecting the money.
Buck a game max for the blockbuster hits.  Maybe a quarter a pop for the rest.
"You used to pay a quarter to play it once.  Now with a quarter you can play it forever....." 

FYI
Humble Bundle's current deal is "pay what you want" for some DRM free Neo Geo games.
(or pay more and get more, or pay at another tier and get more...whatever)
If you pay $40 you get a T-shirt. 
Not sure I can bring myself to pay for games that I can already play for free (and don't really play much).
I kinda want that shirt though.

That is sort of where I am.  I play a few of those games.  I'd like that shirt more though.

[pbj]

I mean, are we talking for personal use or are we talking approved to use in a commercial environment?  Good luck getting more than 99 cents for personal use and you'd better include a way to play it on my iPhone.  Pac Man 256 is fun as hell and didn't cost me a dime.  $6.99 gets rid of what few limitations the free version imposes.

[Jamesbeat]

I can certainly see a market for a ready-made machine with an app store kind of arrangement for games.
Not something I'd be interested in, but there must be plenty of people who have a casual interest in owning a machine, but can't be bothered to build or convert themselves a mame cabinet.

Today is my holiday party at work. I always bring my bartop in 'for the kids to play' (the kids rarely get a turn )

Most of my work colleagues are extremely enthusiastic about the machine and express a desire to own one, but wouldn't actually go as far as to make one themselves.

I just found out that a new guy who started working here a few days ago used to have a modest collection of cabs. His dad was an operator in the '80's.

He told me he paid $600 for an Asteroids bartop.
I could definitely see someone like him buying a ready made solution.

[JDFan]

The Polycade thread got me thinking about pricing for licensed ROMs. I know in the past a few companies tried to legally license ROMs for sale and were unsuccessful, but I'm curious what the community thinks.

1. If legally licensed ROMs/CHDs were easily available, would you buy them?

Possibly - though with all of them available free to download would have to offer something more than just the rom ( ie. fully emulated system with 100% complete dumps of everything needed to play the game like original - no partially working emulated dumps or recoded non original remakes.) Also would depend on the licensing offered (ie. would it be tied to the first system installed on or reuseable for multiple cabinets ?, Would it be legal for resale on a system built for it ?, Could it be used commercially like an original cabinet ?, etc. etc.

2. What price would you be willing to pay per game?

Depends on the game and the license conditions but the $1 - $5 range seems fair to both the end user and the company selling the rom (perhaps a lower price for a compilation set that had several games I wanted and some others that might be used occasionally like the PC compilation releases offered by Namco etc.

3. For fun- What would be your first purchase?

Robotron or Smash TV

[Generic Eric]

Is there a device for google like the apple TV that up can flick your screen to?  If I had a pocket device full of games that I could swosh to the arcade machine to play with real arcade controls, that would be cool.  Not sure you monetize that though.

[Haze]

1. Yes, but I'd only pay if the games were completely untouched, no modernizations / alterations (or if it at least included that, I don't mind modernizations, but the untouched original must be there)
2. depends on what it was, how good the emulation was etc?
3. WWF WrestleFest is always a good fun 4 player game*

* and good luck with that, the distribution / naming rights for practically every element of that game have expired, not even the WWE can use the WWF logos AFAIK.

but seriously, it's a legal minefield, even in cases where it has happened I'm not entirely sure it was all 100% legal, IIRC Star Roms did have Star Wars (Atari, Vector) available at one point, but I doubt Atari's license to use the name extended this far either.  Music replacements are also common, even for 'original' tunes, if they sound a bit too close to something else a lawyer today will often say the music needs changing (a lot of Rainbow Islands ports were hit with this)

Then there are things like http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing.htm where lawyers and copyright owners cared far less back in the day, a fair bit of that would raise eyebrows now even just over character likenesses (a fair number of re-released emulated games have had slight details of character art modified for that exact reason)  There's a whole page of ingame ones there too ( http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing5.htm ) and check the portraits page too, what's there barely scratches the surface.

There are also other issues in some games that would end up with them being banned if put to a ratings board today, I'm pretty sure some of the beat 'em ups allow you to hit children (you're punished for it, but it can happen) these days you can't even have people die if your rollercoaster flies off the track in Rollercoaster Tycoon, and you usually can't even use an attack button if a kid is in the targets.

So you'd have to go through a LOT of effort for something like this.

[MTPPC]

What I would pay for is a service that makes an easy web list of emulators and games with some criteria to limit to your type of cab, vertical/horiz and put together a custom front end with just the data you need and no extraneous. I find the complete over-abundance of terrible games in complete emulator romlists burdensome to the use of the game.

DMCA be damned.